Painting and decorating in Berlin
The prep is most of the job. Filling, sanding, plaster repair, then paint that actually stays put.
Painting is the trade everyone reckons they could do themselves, and the one where the gap between a professional and an amateur job shows up hardest under a low winter sun. The reason is simple: how a painted wall looks is decided by the preparation, and preparation is boring, slow and easy to skip.
What’s included
Full prep — stripping paper, filling, sanding, repairing damaged plaster, treating stains and priming. Plastering and skimming, render, and repairs to existing plaster. Painting walls, ceilings and woodwork. Wallpaper hung if you want it. Floors and fittings protected, and everything cleared up at the end.
I also do concrete and subfloor work, and drop ceilings, which come up alongside decorating more often than you’d think.
How the job actually runs
- Protect. Floors sheeted, fittings covered, doorways sealed. Altbau dust gets everywhere, remarkably fast.
- Strip. Paper off where it’s coming off, loose and flaking material back to something sound.
- Repair. Cracks opened up rather than skimmed over, blown plaster cut out and made good, holes filled in stages rather than one deep fill that shrinks back.
- Sand. Between the filling stages, and properly. This is where the hours go, and it’s what you’re actually paying for.
- Prime. Bare plaster, repairs and stains all need sealing, with the right primer for the substrate rather than a general-purpose one.
- Paint. Ceilings, then walls, then woodwork. Two coats as standard, more if a strong colour is going over a light one.
- Cut in and finish. The line between wall and ceiling, and the edges around the Stuck. That’s where the job gets judged.
Berlin walls
Lime plaster doesn’t behave like modern gypsum. It’s softer, more porous, and it doesn’t take modern fillers and paints nearly as readily. Putting a standard modern system over old lime plaster is a common reason paint looks fine for a year and then starts flaking.
Woodchip — Raufaser — is on a huge number of Berlin walls, often several layers deep with paint over each one. Getting it off is a big job, and it reveals whatever was being hidden underneath, which is sometimes nothing and sometimes a wall that needs re-skimming. Painting over it is quicker and cheaper, and it means living with that texture. Either is fine, but make the choice deliberately.
Damp and cold-bridge staining turns up in the corners of external walls, mostly in flats heated on and off and hardly ever ventilated. Paint over a damp stain without sorting the cause and you’ll have the same stain back by February. I’ll tell you when I think you’ve got a ventilation or damp problem rather than a decorating one.
High ceilings and Stuck change the labour. Cutting in around ornamental cornice is slow, careful work, and there’s no way to hurry it that doesn’t show.
How long it takes
A single room in reasonable nick, prepped and painted properly, is two to four days. A whole flat is one to three weeks depending on size and condition. Stripping woodchip throughout, or re-skimming, can double either figure — and the making good has to dry before painting, which adds calendar days that aren’t labour days.
Cold, damp weather slows the drying. In a Berlin winter with the windows shut, that’s a real factor.
What moves the price
- The state of the walls. Far and away the biggest variable, and the hardest to judge from a photo.
- Whether the wallpaper is coming off. Stripping woodchip and re-skimming afterwards is a different job from painting a sound wall.
- Ceiling height and Stuck. Access, plus slow careful cutting in.
- Colour change. Dark over light, or any strong colour, wants more coats.
- Woodwork. Doors, frames, skirting and windows are labour-heavy next to flat wall area, especially where old gloss has to be sanded back.
- Whether you’re living in it. Working around furniture and around you is slower than working in an empty flat.
Send me photos of the worst wall, not the best one. That’s the one that sets the job.
Common questions
- Why does a proper paint job cost more than I expected?
- Because most of it isn't painting. On an Altbau wall, the filling, sanding, repairing and priming is routinely two thirds of the labour. The paint goes on quickly — that's the short bit at the end.
- Can you paint over the wallpaper that's already there?
- Sometimes, but woodchip and old layered paper are usually better off. Paint over it and you've locked in a texture you'll be looking at for years, and if it lifts later it takes the paint with it.
- My walls keep cracking in the same places. Can that be fixed?
- Usually. Cracks that keep coming back mean movement or a substrate problem rather than bad filling, so the answer is to deal with the cause and use a system that can cope with it, not fill it again and hope.
- Do you do the Stuck as well?
- I'll paint carefully around and into existing decorative cornice, and repair damaged sections. Full ornamental restoration is a specialist craft, and I'll tell you if that's what a room really needs.