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An old rendered wall in a pale chalky limewash, cloudy and matt, lit by low morning sun

Goes on dark. Dries pale.

Limewash, period colour and wallpaper for the older houses of Norwood, Unley and Parkside.

Limewash, mineral paint, period colour and wallpaper for the villas and bungalows of Norwood, Unley and Parkside. Two painters and an apprentice, one house at a time.

Wall:

Take a brush to the wall. Lime always goes on darker than it dries.Brush side to side. Swipe up to read on.

Last stroke: wet touch dry dry

This wall is touch dry in about 25 seconds while you watch it. A real one wants a day between coats.Here it dries as you lift the brush. A real wall wants a day between coats.

Limewash dries several shades paler than it goes on.

Drag across the wall to brush it with the chosen limewash. From the keyboard, the arrow keys move the brush, Shift with an arrow turns it, and Enter or Space lays a stroke.

Nº 1 · Raw umber

One house, then the next.

There are three of us: two painters and an apprentice. We take one house at a time and finish it before we start the next, so whoever opens up your hallway on the first morning is the one who hangs the pictures back at the end. Most of our work is in the older streets, in villas and bungalows with lime in their walls. If a job isn’t ours, a new build or a block to be sprayed out, we say so at the first visit.

What we take on

  • Limewash and mineral paint on render, soft brick and stone
  • Period colour for villas and bungalows, tried on the wall first
  • Wallpaper, lining paper and all, hung to a plumb line
  • Inside and out: ceilings, joinery, verandahs, lace and fences
A painter's hands laying raw umber limewash on old render, the fresh stroke dark and the ones behind it drying pale
Parkside, day one. The first coat on the side passage, raw umber in lime.

Nº 2 · Lime putty

Lime is slow. We let it be.

Limewash is burnt limestone, slaked with water and left to age as a putty, then thinned and coloured with earth. It breathes, so it suits soft brick, bluestone and old render that need to let their damp out, and it hardens by taking carbon back from the air until it is, more or less, limestone again. We lay it on in four or five thin coats, damping the wall down first on hot days so it doesn’t dry too fast and dust off. It is never even. That is the point: it moves with the light the way the stone does.

We won’t put lime over acrylic. It can’t breathe through plastic and it will lift. If your walls have acrylic on them we’ll say so on the first visit and show you what stripping involves, or suggest a mineral paint.

Jars and small heaps of umber, ochre, oxide and green earth beside a tub of lime putty and a board of test patches
Raw umber, yellow ochre, a red oxide and green earth: the whole palette, more or less.
  • Raw umber for shaded walls
  • Yellow ochre for warmth
  • Red oxide for doors and plinths
  • Green earth for joinery and shutters

The patch on the left went on this morning. Drag along to watch the one beside it harden.A trial patch, painted this morning, beside one left a season.

  1. Day 1 touch dry in the hour
  2. Week 1 the colour lifts
  3. Week 4 hard enough to wipe
  4. Month 3 stone again
Earth in the lime

Rules of thumb; the weather moves them.

Nº 3 · Verandah green

Colour the house was built for.

An 1880s villa and a 1920s bungalow want different colours, and the house tells you which: its stone, its brick, the colour under the flaking paint on the fascia. We choose by eye, on the wall, in daylight.

Period colour means colours right for the house’s age. If your street has council rules, those come first; we’ll help you read them and paint trial patches for the planner.

Six schemes from our deck, each on the house it suits.Six schemes from our deck. Choose a strip to see it on the house; Escape brings you back.

  • Bluestone & BuffVilla, 1880–1900Body: the bluestone itself, cleaned and repointed, never painted Trim: a warm buff limewash on quoins and render Door: a deep oxide in linseed-oil paintStone left as stone, with the render picked out in buff: the plainest villa scheme, and often the right one.
  • Quandong RedVilla, 1880–1900Body: a pale sandstone limewash Trim: quandong red on the lace and fascias Door: a dark green earthLight walls, strong trim and a dark door: the 1890s liked the lace to be seen from the street.
  • Parklands StoneVilla, 1880–1900Body: a stone-coloured lime with ochre in it Trim: lime putty, near white Door: a deep verandah greenFor rendered villas that were meant to look like cut stone: one warm colour, the joinery pale.
  • Pepper-tree GreenBungalow, 1915–1930Body: a grey-sand mineral paint on the roughcast Trim: pepper-tree green on the gable straps Door: a mid umberThe 1920s went darker on the timber and quieter on the walls, the way the old pepper trees look in summer.
  • Mallee OxideBungalow, 1915–1930Body: mallee oxide, an earth red Trim: cream on the barge boards and posts Door: a green so dark it reads blackA red-earth bungalow with cream joinery: strong from across the road, easy to live with close up.
  • Brick & CreamBungalow, 1915–1930Body: the face brick, washed and left Trim: cream on the joinery Door: a sage greenWhere the brick was always meant to show: we clean it, leave it, and paint only what was painted.

Nº 4 · Yellow ochre

Hung plumb. Matched by eye.

Old plaster gets lining paper first where it needs it. Every wall gets its own plumb line, never the corner, because no corner in an old house is true. The paste is left to soak in so the paper won’t blister later, and the repeat is matched by eye, drop to drop. We order one extra roll from the same batch. A half-drop pattern takes a little more paper, because every second drop starts half a repeat further down the roll.

A decorator brushing out a drop of gum-nut wallpaper beside a pencilled plumb line in a bungalow front room
Unley, second week. The front room, lining paper done, third drop going up.

Drag the brass handle to widen or narrow the wall; on the keyboard, the arrow keys move it by a centimetre, with Shift by ten.

3rolls, and one more from the same batch

Drops
9
Cut each
3.12 m
Waste each
0.25 m
Repeat
0.26 m
Drops a roll
3
To hang
2.77 m

Roll 10.05 m × 520 mm. Windows aren’t taken off, because their short drops come from offcuts. A guide for ordering; we measure the room before anyone buys paper.

Foldedmirrored every way, like a folded paper cut

Motif, drawn for us
Pattern
Twelve more repeats, for the curious

Every flat repeat falls into one of seventeen families. Here are the other twelve, by the short names pattern-makers give them.

More repeats

Match
Room

Foldedmirrored every way, like a folded paper cut

A 4.20 m villa wall, straight match, the pattern repeating every 260 mm: 2.77 m to hang between rail and skirting, 2.87 with a little for trimming, so each drop is cut at 3.12 m to start on the same point of the pattern. Nine drops, three to a roll: three rolls, and one more from the same batch. About 250 mm is lost from each drop.

On a half-drop, every second drop starts half a repeat further down the roll, so it can come out longer. On this paper both still come to 3.12 m, and three still fit on a roll.

Roll 10.05 m × 520 mm. A guide for ordering; we measure the room before anyone buys paper.

Nº 5 · Mallee oxide

Front first. Weather last.

A bluestone villa freshly painted, its bullnose verandah and lace in deep green, trim in buff and the door in oxide red
Norwood, late autumn. Posts and lace in green earth, trim in buff, the door in oxide.

We paint outside in the mild months: not in full sun with the wall above about 30 °C, not before a frost, and not in a hot north wind, which dries lime before it can harden. Preparation is most of it. Repointing in lime mortar, scraping joinery back to sound timber, linseed-oil paint on old sashes, mineral paint on render that has been painted before. Verandah lace, fretwork, fascias and front fences too, which is often where the colour of a house really lives.

When we won’t paint outside

  • The wall above about 30 °C. Lime dries before it can harden, so we start on the shaded side and follow the shade round the house.

  • A frost on the way. Wet lime that freezes overnight is powder by the morning.

  • A hot north wind. It pulls the water out of a fresh coat in minutes. We pack up and come back.

Nº 6 · Pink clay

Cornice to skirting.

Ceilings, cornices and roses cleaned back until the detail shows again. Picture rails. Sashes eased so they open. Mineral paint on old plaster, which stays open to the air and won’t craze. We work one room at a time, so the rest of the house stays liveable, and we pack up each evening rather than at the end.

An empty bungalow front room in warm oatmeal paint, a ceiling rose above and leadlight colours on the floorboards
Parkside, a 1920s front room in a warm oatmeal mineral paint.

What we won’t do

  • We won’t limewash a wall that has acrylic on it.
  • We won’t paint over bare bluestone.
  • We won’t start your house before the last one’s finished.
  • We won’t hurry a wall that isn’t dry.
  • We won’t choose your colours for you. We’ll paint you three.

Nº 7 · Pepper-tree green

How a job goes.

  1. Nº 1

    A walk through the house. We look, tap the render and scrape a little.

    first week
  2. Nº 2

    Colour on the wall. Trial patches on site, left a week to dry.

    a week later
  3. Nº 3

    The job. One house, start to finish.

    weeks, not days
  4. Nº 4

    Handover. Leftover paint labelled by room, and a return visit once the lime has cured.

    and three months on

Nº 8 · Lime putty

Tell us about the house.

A few lines are plenty. We’ll come and look before we talk about colour.

The wall you brushedPlain lime putty Brush it again

The house
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