Commercial / Hospitality and Retail
Hospitality and retail. Finished around a building that is still in use.
Hospitality and retail share one constraint above all others: the building is in use while we paint it. A restaurant is on duty seven nights a week. A retail centre has leases that say the doors open at nine. Boutique hotels and lodges are booked through the season. Offices run a five-day cycle, and body-corporate blocks are somebody's home. The painting cannot become the reason any of them stops.
Hospitality also asks for finishes that read beautifully under low light and hold up to a service crew moving through them. We have spent years applying the finishes operators ask for: Porter's French Wash over Porter's Low Sheen 'Oaten' at Toast and Oak in Queenstown, a custom rust-effect paint system at Fancy Cow in Blenheim, refined contemporary interiors at Roki Collection, full interior and exterior redecoration at Queenstown Park Boutique Hotel, and the full exterior and interior of Hidden Lodge at Fern Hill.
Retail centres, offices, body-corp blocks, and multi-site rollouts ask for something adjacent: work programmed in stages that respect the trading day, overnight or early-morning windows where the brief requires them, and a single point of contact on the thread with the centre manager throughout. Both halves matter, and we run them to the same standard.
Sector
What we do in hospitality and retail
Decorative and specialty finishes.
Porter's, lime washes, custom paint systems, bespoke colour matching. Samples on site before the wall every time. We rehearse the application on a board the operator can hold against the lighting before it goes on a hero elevation.
Front-of-house repaints.
Dining rooms, bars, lobbies, atriums, guest corridors. Hand-cut detail at joinery and architraves. Low-VOC Resene systems for occupied spaces.
Back-of-house and BOH-adjacent.
Kitchen surrounds, service corridors, bathrooms. Specified systems for the substrate and the cleaning regime.
Multi-tenant retail centres.
Common areas, tenancy fit-out paintwork, façade repaints, hoarding graphics, signage substrate prep. Programme written around the centre's trading hours and the head contractor's master schedule.
Office fit-out and refresh.
Workplace repaints across occupied tenancies. Out-of-hours work where the office is on a five-day cycle. Dust and odour control with low-VOC Resene systems so staff can return on Monday.
Body-corporate coordination.
Multi-unit residential blocks where the body corporate is the client, the residents are the audience, and the AGM has already approved a colour. We attend committee meetings if the scope is large enough to warrant it, communicate with each unit owner before access, and resolve the small things (a missed letterbox, a damaged plant) before they become committee items.
Multi-site rollouts.
National retail programmes where the same brand specification applies to twenty sites in five regions. Same crew leadership, same documentation, same finish, sequenced through the regional rollout schedule.
Exterior and grounds.
Cedar staining, weatherboard repaints, balustrades and decks, signage substrates. Scheduled around the operating season.
Sector
How we work in hospitality and retail
The work is procedural, and it is scheduled around the people using the building.
Sequencing around trading hours.
We read the master programme, agree our windows, and protect the trades coming after us. Shoulder season for full repaints, in-season for targeted areas only, with the operator's revenue calendar in front of us. Where we work in a live tenancy we agree access in writing, photograph the condition of the space before we start, and hand it back at the same standard.
Overnight work where required.
Front-of-house spaces that cannot close are painted after service. Doors open at five for a six-thirty service the next day, with no smell and no tape.
Dust and odour control.
Low-VOC ranges specified for occupied venues and tenancies. Negative-pressure containment where the brief calls for it. We finish each shift to a guest-ready standard, not a contractor-ready standard.
Communication.
A named project manager for the duration. A weekly site report shared with the head contractor or centre manager. Daily updates on a shared thread when the programme is tight. Variations agreed before they happen, not after.
Decorative samples on site.
Porter's and custom systems are applied to a sample board in the actual room, under the actual lighting, before we commit to a hero wall. The operator signs off the board.
Finish.
Specified Resene systems applied to the manufacturer's stated dry film thickness, hand-cut where access is constrained, and signed off coat-by-coat against the QA photography. The finish needs to read as part of the venue or the centre, not as a contractor's intervention.
Selected work
Featured projects
Painting to stages two, three, and four of this retail centre in Frankton, Queenstown. Programme sequenced around the staged opening of the centre, in coordination with the head contractor and the centre management.
Full interior and exterior redecoration of this hotel.
Entire outdoor area, roof, decks, balconies, and indoor lounge.
Porter's French Wash in a custom shade over Porter's Low Sheen 'Oaten' through the main dining space.
Custom rust-effect paint system, matched to the restaurant's design intent.
Painting works delivering a refined finish aligned with the project's premium architectural design.
We are extremely satisfied with the quality of workmanship that Finesse has delivered on this project. The staff were professional to deal with, very approachable and considerate of our guests. Their work ethic was outstanding, willing to work late nights and weekends in order to complete rooms by certain dates.
Francisco Freire, Hotel Manager, Queenstown Park.
Coverage
Nationwide, travelling from seven bases.
Regional BaseWe Work Here Too
Tell us about the venue or the centre, the operating calendar, the tenancy mix, and the design intent. We will visit, talk through the finishes, and send a written quote.