Fanlight numbers are a staple diet of signwriting. A lot of houses have them & its a nice finishing touch to a renovated property. Hand painted by a signwriter offers something vinyl stickers can’t. Obviusly more in terms of cost, but gives that hand produced, quaint, traditional & finesse a vinyl sticker just doesn’t offfer. With hand painted the font types are infinate, but generally the signwriter has experience in which types suit the period of the house best & also whether having gold or other colours are more suitable.
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The clients originally aksed for their front driveway pillar to be painted as well as the fanlight, with a matching font type. A rough visual was offered with a selection of options as well as a visual for the fanlight numbers. Due to their being 2 properties within the driveway and a slight ongoing dispute over which property is no.106, it was decided to only have the fanlight numbers produced. The pillar would’ve been a nice smart entrance number which would be clearly visable from the road, which would be ideal for delivery companies etc.
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Another visual produced for the clients to choose from was the colour of the numbers. A physical visual like this can show better than on a photoshop image of how the paint colour would look on the glass. They prefered the ivory colour rather than the immitation gold, but worried the ivory would look too yellowy so opted for an off white.
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Once on site the first stage for producing any fanlight numbers is to surgically clean the windows. This ensures a non-greasy surface. Then the middle of the fanlight is measured & marked out. From that the ready made drawings of the numbers can be placed into the measured area of the window. A choice of sizes are taken to site so the decision can be made with both the expertise of the Signwriter and the wishes of the client.
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With the drawing size chosen its placed it the measured spot on the glass on the inside & drawn on the outside of the window using a marking out pencil. This gives an acurate drawing to paint to, which is started with the outines.
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The outlining paint is a specialist fast drying paint, whhich assists in speeding up the process. Once its dry the filling colour can be added. The outlining is produced with a fine long hair chisel edged signwriter brush, but the fil is applied with a much wider chisel hair signwriters brush which is also shorter haired. This allows for the fill colour to be applied in only a few strokes & gives the paint a consistant flow off the brush which in turn lays the paint consistantly on the glass.
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The paint applied to the fill looks like it requires more coats of paint, but this is due to the light shining through from the outside of the window & then acts like stained glass. The outside of the window looks as it is intended. The only way to provent the brush strokes showing with fanlight numbers being painted, is to go over the painted numbers again but with a dark colour ideally black, but a lot of clients prefer the look as it is, so it can be seen that its hand painted, but also as the black painted numbers on the reverse can look a bit overpowering.
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Once the fill paint colour is also dry the last remaining work is to clean off the marking out on the woutside of the window & then cover the numbers again on the inside of the window, but this time with a clear varnish which hardens over a day or so & that protects the paintwork & alows the windows to be cleaned without the signwriting coming away when rubbed.
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The completed work taken drom the driveway. The clients were really pleased with the result & left a glowing review on Google.
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Traditional & Contemporary Hand Painted Sign Writing in London
Sign Writer Traditional Signs of London
info@traditionalsignsoflondon.uk