Sign writer London produces property signwriting across the capital. The work is requested from several sources. One of those is direct from the resident or owner, but more commonly is from the property developers. That was the case on this occasion.

The clients sent through an image of the existing street numbers badly painted direct onto brickwork. This poses a few preparation problems. The old numbers could be scratched or sanded off but if that is the method used the brickwork would have a lightened area where the numbers were so would not match & notice.

Another alternative would be to paint the whole of the brickwork white, but that may not be the look the owners are looking for.

With experience I could suggest to the clients that a painted shape with a coachline would be ideal with a matching colour for the numbers. This could be produced either with a white shape & black numbers or a black shape with white numbers. After providing visuals for the clients to chose from the latter option was prefered.

An attempt was still made to remove the existing numbers but they proved as predicted hard to remove leaving a clean finish. The more that could be removed the better just so the less of the original numbers could be seen, especially as they weren’t painted in the centre of the brickwork.

 The background shape of a scallop cornered rectangle was sketched out with chalk & then painted in with oil based paint. This is painted with quick drying paint but dry time is still around an hour so the rest of the requested work is produced whilst awaiting the panel of black to dry.

 The property portico pillars had some embossed sections with matching shape of the panel painted on the brickwork pillar. They were just not highlighted.  The numbers are drawn onto the pillars in charcoal before they have the signwriting added.

A traditional sign writer London has experience in knowing what the best ‘fonts’ are for numbers on period properties. too many have been altered & modernised when the traditional & historic still tend to look the most high end & smart, especially when painted onto white masonry.

Sign writer London producing hand painted property numbers

Matching pillars with fine Trajan roman style numbers give a property finesse & a high end feel. The ‘font’ isn’t as stand out as Times new Roman or Bodoni but subtle can be better than bold at times, especially when it comes to street numbers.

 An additional piece of signwriting at this property was to give the flat adjacent to the main entrance a number & its letter to destinguish it for postal deliveries etc.

As the entrance had a buzzer , it was most ideal to have their number above it. It could be seen from the street if written high enough up the wall. If too far removed from the dooor entrance or too high up it would’ve made the overall look of the property not look so asthetically pleaseing, so postion of numbers is important.

 The entrance to the basement flat was set back with just a gate where the steps went downwards to the front door. The walls past the gate are pink, so can look clashing, but the gate blocks a fair bit of that out.

 The signwriting is viasble from the street but is also on the main frontage to the 79 property. This way its very easy to destinguish which entrance is which but also that the side entrance is a seperate address.

 Producing the three lots of 79 numbers allowed enough time for the black panel on the brick pillar to have dried, so the final piece of the job was to paint on the coachline border to the panel & add the numbers in off white.

Hand Painted Traditional & Contemporary Sign writing in London

Sign writer London: Traditional Signs of London

info@traditionalsignsoflondon.uk