Commercial Painting

What commercial painting means for an Adelaide business

Commercial painting is the paint work that keeps your premises looking sharp while your business keeps running. Different from a house repaint. The stakes shift. Customers walk past your facade every day. Staff sit under those ceilings. Landlords have hand-back clauses. Councils have signage rules. A paint job that looks fine on the wall can still be a problem if it took the front door off the hinges for a week, or left the tea room smelling of solvent on Monday morning.

PKB Painting does commercial work across the Adelaide metro area, with a solid base on the east side. We work with shopfits, office tenancies, cafes and restaurants, medical rooms, hospitality venues, strata blocks, warehouses and industrial units. Sometimes it is a single wall behind the coffee machine. Sometimes it is a two-storey facade in painter Norwood that needs scaffolding and a weekend shutdown. Same crew either way.

The east side of Adelaide has its own mix. Older shopfronts on The Parade and Magill Road with render that has copped decades of sun. Newer fit-outs in painter Kensington and painter Unley where the finish has to sit right under downlights. Strata common areas in painter North Adelaide that get walked past by a hundred people a day. Every one of these has different priorities. What holds them together is the need for a clean job, on time, with the doors staying open.

Call 0404 539 369 to book a site visit and we will scope the work in person.

What you are seeing, and what is actually causing it

Commercial premises age differently to houses. Foot traffic, cleaning chemicals, hot kitchens, wet bathrooms, till counters that cop a thousand bumps a week. Here are the common issues we get called for, and what is really going on underneath.

Facades looking tired. North and west-facing walls in Adelaide take a hammering from the sun. UV breaks down the binder in the paint film, chalking sets in, colours drift. Reds and dark blues go first. If your last repaint was more than eight or ten years ago and the facade faces the afternoon sun, chalking is the likely story. A wipe with a black cloth will show it up.

Peeling around eaves and window frames. Usually a moisture problem. Water is getting behind the paint through a gap in the flashing, a failed sealant bead, or a rotten timber section. Painting over it will not hold. The substrate needs to be dried out and the water source fixed before any new coat goes on. We can flag what needs a chippy or a plumber before we quote the paint work.

Scuffs and marks on high-traffic walls. Corridors, back-of-house passages, near tills, along stair walls. Standard low-sheen paints scrub off after a few years of hard cleaning. The fix is a washable acrylic with a higher sheen, or a purpose-made commercial coating designed to take repeated wipe-downs.

Bathrooms and kitchens with mould spotting. Extraction is the first thing to check. If the fans are undersized or the door stays shut, humidity sits on the ceiling and the mould comes back no matter what paint you use. We can spec a mould-inhibiting coating, but it is not a substitute for airflow. Where the extraction is fine, a proper wash, a fungicidal wash, a spot-prime and two coats of the right paint will hold for years.

Signage surrounds and shopfront trim looking flat. This is often just weathering plus grime. A wash, a sand and two coats of the right enamel and the whole shopfront lifts. It is one of the cheapest ways to freshen a premises without a full facade repaint.

Colour drift after a partial repaint. A common one for tenancies. Someone patch-painted a section with the same colour off the tin and it does not match. Old paint fades, new paint does not, and the boundary shows. The fix is usually to break the repaint at a corner or an architectural line so the eye does not catch the join.

Tenancy hand-back issues. Landlords want the walls back to the original spec. That means the right colour, the right sheen level and full coverage over any tenant colours or wall graphics. We work from the make-good schedule and hand back a clean job the agent can sign off.

If you are in an older strip like The Parade, Magill Road or Portrush Road, the coastal salt is less of a worry than it is closer to the beach, but the sun exposure and traffic pollution are worse. The paint spec should match the reality of the site, not a generic quote written from a photo.

How we run a commercial job, from the first call to the last coat

Our commercial process is built around one thing: your business has to keep trading while we are on site. Everything else flows from that.

Step one: the phone call. Call 0404 539 369 and tell us what you have. Size of the premises, what the space is used for, whether we are working around your hours or during them, and any deadlines you are working to. This is a five minute conversation and it sets up the site visit.

Step two: site visit and scope. We come to the premises, walk through with you, and take notes on every surface. Substrate condition, sheen levels currently in use, existing colours, access constraints, any signage or fittings to work around, floor protection needs. If you have a landlord spec or a brand colour standard, we take a copy.

Step three: written quote. You get a written quote back that lists the areas, the prep involved, the number of coats, the products and the timing options. Nothing hidden, nothing left as TBC on site. If we spot something during prep that changes the scope, we call you before we do anything about it.

Step four: scheduling around your trade. This is where commercial work gets sorted from residential. We plan the job around your hours. After-hours evenings, weekend blocks, staged zones during the day so half the space stays live, full nights for retail. For an office fit-out we can do one tenancy at a time so the neighbouring suites are not affected.

Step five: setup and protection. Drop sheets over floors, plastic over fittings, tape around edges. Signage or barriers if the area needs to stay off-limits from staff or customers. All exit paths kept clear. If we are working over a weekend, the site is walked through Friday afternoon so nothing gets left in the way.

Step six: prep. This is where most of the actual work happens. Wash down, scrape off any loose material, fill and sand, spot-prime any bare substrate, mask edges. On older premises this can take longer than the painting itself. Cut corners on prep and the finish will fail inside a year.

Step seven: coats. Prime where needed, then the topcoats. Brushed or rolled for most interior work. Sprayed for large ceilings, warehouses, or where a specific finish requires it. Between-coat drying respected properly, no rushing the recoat window.

Step eight: pack down and walk-through. Everything off the floor, drop sheets folded, plastic pulled, edges checked, touch-ups done. Then a walk-through with you or your site contact, punch-list any last items, sign off.

Step nine: invoice and warranty. Written invoice, and the workmanship warranty in writing.

For strata and body corporate work in painter Prospect and around the northeast, we can work directly with the strata manager and copy them on the paperwork so you do not have to sit in the middle.

Gear and standards we work to

The paint on the wall is only as good as what goes underneath and what puts it there. Commercial jobs are unforgiving of shortcuts.

Preparation gear. Random orbital sanders with dust extraction for anywhere we cannot leave dust behind. Wet sanding where dust is a food-safety issue. HEPA vacuums for post-sand clean-up. Sugar-soap wash-down for kitchen and hospitality walls where oil residue sits on the surface. Pressure wash for exterior facades.

Application gear. Airless sprayers for large exteriors, warehouses, high ceilings and any job where hand-application would take too long. HVLP sprayers for fine trim and joinery where you want a factory-look finish. Rollers and brushes for everything else. We keep the sprayers off unless the mask-up justifies it, because overspray on a commercial premises is a serious problem.

Products. We work mainly with Dulux, Wattyl and Haymes across the commercial range. Product selection depends on the substrate, the sheen level, the cleanability requirement and, for exteriors, the sun exposure. For hospitality kitchens and bathrooms we spec a mould-inhibiting acrylic. For high-traffic corridors we spec a scrubbable acrylic with a semi-gloss or satin sheen. For metal fittings and steel work we spec a two-pack epoxy or an alkyd enamel depending on the environment.

Standards. Our work follows AS/NZS 2311, the painting of buildings standard, which covers surface preparation, coating selection and application. Where lead-based paint is present on older shopfronts, common on pre-1970 buildings, we follow AS 4361.1 for lead paint management. All coatings we use come with a safety data sheet that stays on site while the product is being used.

Site safety. Every crew member holds a White Card. Working at heights on scaffolds or EWPs is done under a documented safe work method statement. We carry public liability insurance and workers compensation, and we can send certificates of currency to your building manager or landlord before we start.

Environmental. Water-based coatings wherever the spec allows. Solvents captured and disposed of through licensed waste channels, not tipped into your drains. Empty tins recycled. If your site has an environmental management plan, we work to it.

If you are shopping around and wondering how much does commercial painting cost per square foot, the honest answer is that it depends on prep, access, timing and product. That article walks through what actually drives the number so the quotes you get from us and anyone else are easier to compare side by side.

Urgent and after-hours commercial work

Commercial paint problems do not always wait. A shop opens Monday and the facade got tagged Friday night. A restaurant burst a pipe and the plaster is patched but the wall needs finishing before the next service. A tenancy hand-back date is Friday and the paint schedule slipped. Real jobs. Real deadlines.

We handle urgent commercial work by being straight with you about timing. When you call 0404 539 369, tell us the deadline and we will tell you honestly what is possible. If we can help, we can often start same week and work nights or a weekend to hit your date. If we cannot, we will say so up front so you can find someone who can.

For anti-graffiti and quick refresh work on shopfronts in painter Adelaide CBD and the inner east, we can usually get a small crew out within a day or two. For larger urgent jobs we might need to shuffle scheduling, but we do not take a job we cannot actually deliver.

We are not a 24/7 emergency service. What we are is a crew that will work outside your trading hours to get the job done without shutting you down. Nights, weekends, staged zones, split shifts. Whatever the site needs.

Why businesses on the east side call us

We are based in East Adelaide and most of our commercial work is in the eastern suburbs, the CBD fringe and the inner south. That matters for a few practical reasons.

Response time. A quick site visit in the east is a short drive, not a half-day trip. When you need a scope done fast, we can be there fast, and we can often quote inside the same week.

Local product knowledge. We know how North Adelaide sandstone takes a coating, how the render on Magill Road bungalows behaves under sun, what the strata schemes around the northeast usually specify, and which colours the local heritage overlays will and will not sign off on. That saves you time and it saves you a repaint if the first colour choice would have breached a rule.

Tidy crews. Commercial work happens in front of your customers and staff. Our crews turn up in branded uniforms, keep the site organised, and pack down properly at the end of every shift. No music blaring, no cigarettes at the doorway, no tools strewn across the floor when the cleaner comes in.

Reliable scheduling. When we book you in for a weekend, we are there for that weekend. If something changes we call you the moment we know, not the morning of. Retail and hospitality operators tell us this is the single biggest difference between us and the last painter they used.

Written quotes and paperwork. Site visit, written quote, insurance certificates, safe work method statements on request, invoice, warranty. All in writing. Body corporates and building managers prefer this because there is nothing to chase.

Interior and exterior in one crew. Some painters only do interiors, some only exteriors. We do both. A retail refresh that includes a facade touch-up, front door repaint and tenancy walls can be handled by one crew across one booking, not three separate jobs.

For a shop, office, cafe or strata job across the east and inner Adelaide, call 0404 539 369 and book a site visit. We will scope the work, write you a proper quote and, if you go ahead, get the paint on the wall without stopping your business from running.