Ceilings, stairwells & tall rooms · Tarrant Rise & the hill parishes
The wall you forgot you had.
The Fifth Wall Studio paints overhead for a living: vaulted ceilings skimmed flat, stairwells cut top-down, double-height entries in scaffold rigs we own rather than rent. The fifth wall is a fifth of every room and most of its light — it deserves a specialist, and it rarely gets one.
Services
The overhead index
01
Vaulted & cathedral ceilings
Raked ceilings sprayed flat and back-rolled from tower rigs, the ridge line cut clean against the collar beams. Flat sheen only — the one place gloss guarantees glare — and the coats thinned to hang at height rather than sag from it.
02
Stairwells, top to bottom
The hardest room in a house, done in the only order that works: top down, landing by landing, every line cut before the rig moves. Walls, sloped ceilings and the spindles on the way past, all under sheeting that stays down for the week.
03
Skim-coat & texture matching
Cracked and stippled ceilings floated to a dead-flat skim in three passes, or the old texture matched grain for grain where flattening would fight the house’s age. Sanded wet, not dry — ceiling dust is the one dust a house never forgives.
04
Double-height entries & halls
The volume that greets every visitor, painted from owned scaffold in low-odour systems with the front door open to the weather. One rig, one week, and a chandelier down-and-up service with an electrician we keep on call.
05
Coving, cornice & ceiling roses
Run mouldings brushed by hand in softened enamel, shadow lines kept crisp, roses picked out or blended to disappear. Spraying cornice is how the details that make a room get paid for and then lost — ours are brushed, and it shows at dusk.
06
The light-fixture service
Fittings dropped, bagged, labelled and reset by us — or upgraded while the ceiling is open, with the electrician’s certificate left on your counter. The week your ceiling is painted is the cheapest week of your life to change a light.
Day 0
The overhead survey
Laser measure, access plan, and the sheen map starting at the ceiling: flat overhead, matte below, satin on the woodwork on the way down. The quote names every metre of scaffold.
Day 1
Rig & protect
Floors double-sheeted, walls masked to a knife line, fittings bagged and labelled. The rig goes up level-checked, because a cut line made from a leaning platform stays crooked forever.
Days 2–4
Skim, sand, seal
Cracks opened and filled, texture floated or matched, and the skim sanded wet with extraction. Ceilings take their flat coats thinned to hang — thick ceiling paint is tomorrow’s sag.
Final day
The upward walk
Every square metre inspected from below with the room’s own lights on, then off, then with a lamp — ceilings are judged at night by the people who live under them. Rig down, floors unmasked, furniture back on its pads.
How it goes
How a tall room goes
The same rig discipline on every overhead job — the only variable is the metres of scaffold, and those are counted at the survey, not guessed at the invoice.
Rooms read from the top down — these ones read correctly.
We had three quotes to just roll it at height. The Fifth Wall scaffolded it, flattened it, and the ceiling now disappears at night — which is the highest compliment a ceiling can be paid.
Word of mouth
Three rooms, measured up
The stairwell had defeated two decorators and one marriage. Their top-down week ended with the highest lines in the house also being the straightest — I checked from the landing with a spirit level, which they found funny.
They dropped the chandelier, reset it two centimetres lower to clear the new table, and left the electrician’s certificate on the counter. The ceiling is flatter than the walls, which is apparently the point.
Our stippled 1970s ceiling is now a skim you could read by. Wet-sanded, no dust anywhere on the planet, and done in four days with the house liveable throughout.
The no-rings promise
Ceiling work is judged by what lands on the floor: ours is double-sheeted with taped seams, masked to knife lines, and vacuumed before the rig comes down. If a drop of ours marks anything you own, the restoration is ours to arrange and pay for — and the ceiling gets re-cut around the repair for free.
Fair questions
Why a specialist for ceilings?
Because everything about overhead work inverts: paint must be thinned to hang rather than laid off thick, sheen must be flat or the room glares, access is half the price, and the inspection happens at night from below. Generalists roll ceilings; we rig rooms.
Skim flat or match the texture — which?
We sample both on the ceiling itself and light them for you after dark. Flattening modernises and brightens; matching keeps a period house honest. Neither is wrong, and one evening under both answers it better than any brochure.
Can you work around a fitted kitchen?
Kitchens are sheeted cabinet by cabinet, extractors bagged, and the ceiling coats go on thinned with the windows open. We have skimmed over more islands than we can count — the sheeting plan is on the quote before we start.
How do you contain ceiling dust?
Ceiling sanding is done wet or with extraction at the head, floors are double-sheeted with taped seams, and the rig is wiped down before it crosses a room. The dust that ruins houses is dry-wall dust; ours never gets the chance to be dry.
Do you own or rent the scaffold?
Own — tower rigs, podiums and boards, maintained in our own yard. No daily-hire meter running on your job, no waiting on a delivery truck before the cut line can start, and the rig leaves on the day we promised.
(555) 872-4463 — the rig desk, Monday to Saturday · heights@fifthwallstudio.example