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The full ground floor elevation at dusk, three lit bays under a dark grey fascia set into pale stone with brick above

Cadogan Gallery, Harriet Walk

Through a main contractor from July 2024 to April 2025, then direct to the gallery from June 2025 · Subcontractor for the earlier work, then contractor direct to the gallery · Harriet Walk, SW1 · A retail unit in a large block of flats, with the flats above · Redecoration of a retail unit now in use as a gallery, inside and out: shopfront joinery, fascia and reveals, plus the gallery interiors, following strip-out · July to September 2024, with subsequent gallery refreshes · Credits below

A retail unit on Harriet Walk in Knightsbridge, taken from a blacked-out vacant shop to the front of a working gallery. We redecorated it inside and out: the shopfront joinery, the fascia and the reveals, plus the gallery rooms behind them. The existing stone surround and dark green stallriser were retained, with our work focused on the timber frontage and interior finishes.

The brief

The unit had been empty and its windows blanked, with one bay of glazing painted out and weathered. The brief was a full redecoration following an initial strip-out.

A gallery front is a harder brief than it looks. There is no product in the window to carry it. The frontage is the whole of the first impression, and at night the glazing turns the inside of the building into the shop window.

Our approach

Strip first, then decide. The fascia came back to bare substrate before anything new went near it, which is the only reliable way to know what you are painting onto and ensure the new coatings bond.

The original stone surround and dark green stallriser were left intact. The new decoration focused on the dark joinery, the fascia and the reveals, kept deliberately quiet against the masonry.

The exterior came back to a sound keyed surface on previously painted timber and metal. Soft or decayed timber took a wood hardener first. Then localised two-part wood repairs, with Toupret Wood Repair Filler as the fine fill on the repairs and the mouldings. Gaps were caulked. Bare and made-good timber was primed, and so was bare or corroded metal. Then two full coats of Zinsser AllCoat Exterior went on.

Inside, the gallery walls took the Tikkurila Optiva system, with a Toupret fine surface filler for the making good. The downstairs viewing area took two coats of Tikkurila Optiva Matt 5. Over that went two coats of a clear matt dead flat decorator's varnish, with a third coat to the highest traffic areas.

On site

The interior was stripped back to bare brick and blockwork, with the ceiling sheeted and the brick paviour floor protected throughout the heavy works.

We completed the initial shopfront and gallery fit-out over a couple of months. We then returned directly for the gallery director to repaint the downstairs viewing area and refresh the gallery walls between exhibitions.

What the rooms ask of a finish

The lower room keeps an exposed structural downstand unfinished against white walls, over a brick paviour and screed floor. The upper room is white throughout, with a painted boarded floor, recessed linear lighting around the ceiling perimeter and a freestanding display wall standing clear of the structure.

Gallery lighting is the hardest test a white wall faces. Track spots and wall washers throw light across a surface at a low angle rather than onto it. Raking light of that kind shows anything the surface is hiding, and a gallery does not hang pictures over the problem.

The result

The project took the building from a vacant, blanked-out shop to a crisp, working gallery. At dusk, the whole elevation lights up from within, with the finished rooms visible across all three bays of glazing.

Photographs

A vacant retail unit on a pale stone elevation before work, the shop windows blanked with letting vinyls and one bay painted out dark
Harriet Walk before we started. Stone pilasters, glass panels set into the paving and a run of dead windows
Blacked-out shop glazing heavily streaked with dirt above a dark green stone stallriser
The glazing close to, before any work, with the stallriser beneath it
A shopfront fascia stripped back to patchy bare substrate above a dark painted spandrel panel
What came off the fascia. Existing coatings taken back before anything new goes on
The interior during strip-out with exposed brick and blockwork, a brick paviour floor and polythene sheeting to the ceiling
Strip-out under way, with the walls taken back and the brick floor protected
The finished shopfront in daylight, dark grey fascia and reveals against pale stone with a dark green stone stallriser
The shopfront finished. The stone and the stallriser are as found, the dark joinery is where our work is
The lower gallery from the opposite corner, white walls washed by track spots above a brick paviour and screed floor
The same room the other way. Four wall washers across one wall
The lower gallery finished in matt white with track lighting, an exposed structural downstand left unfinished and a brick paviour and screed floor
The lower room. The downstand reads bare against the white
A corner of the upper gallery with wall washers raking across white and a blind recess to the window wall
Raking light across a wall. This is the test a gallery finish has to pass
The upper gallery from the stair head, a white display wall meeting the painted boarded floor with a rooflight above
From the top of the stair, walls, floor and ceiling all read as one white
The upper gallery in white with a painted boarded floor and recessed linear lighting to the ceiling perimeter
The main upper room. Painted boards underfoot and a continuous slot of light around the ceiling
The finished shopfront lit from within at dusk, dark grey fascia with the gallery name in applied lettering
The entrance at dusk with the gallery lit behind it

Credits

  • Photography: SFS Interior & Exterior

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