School Decorating, Milton Keynes Academy

Decorating an academy means high ceilings, long corridors, hard-wearing surfaces and a building that has to keep functioning. The spaces in this job ran from standard classrooms to a computer suite, a curved-wall teaching room, a meeting room and the reception and corridor areas that everyone passes through.

Tall classrooms with high-level windows need proper access rather than overreaching from a ladder, and the window bays, reveals and frames take as long as the wall areas do.

The completed classrooms, corridor and reception areas are shown below. Work on an occupied school is planned around the building's timetable rather than the other way round.

Commercial and education interiors are judged on different things from a home, because the building has to keep running and the finishes have to survive contact.

Ask what finish goes on corridors and stairwells. These take constant wear at hand height. A soft matt looks better for one term and then marks permanently; a washable, hard-wearing product is the right answer even though it costs more.

Ask how high-level work is reached. Tall classrooms with high windows need proper access, not overreaching from a ladder. It is both a safety question and a quality one, because work done at a stretch shows.

Look at the boundary lines on anything curved. On a curved wall any wobble in a cut-in line is visible from across the room, and there is nowhere to hide it.

Ask how the programme fits the timetable. Work in an occupied school is planned around the building rather than the other way round, and a contractor who has not asked about that has not thought about it.