Pre-1970 homes, render, heritage and conservation areas are where painting gets specialist. Lead paint needs testing and containment; render needs a different system; heritage needs council approval. The edge cases worth a second opinion before you sign.
Most repaints are straightforward. A handful aren’t — and they’re the ones where the wrong painter can make things genuinely worse. Pre-1970 homes, render, heritage and conservation areas, and metal surfaces all need a specialist system and, sometimes, specialist permission. These are the edge cases worth a second opinion before you sign.
Pre-1970 buildings (lead paint)
Lead paint needs testing, containment and specific PPE and disposal rules. Sanding lead dry is genuinely dangerous — a specialist, lead-safe approach is essential, not optional.
Render or stucco surfaces
Different primer, different paint system. A painter who puts ordinary house paint on render gets about a year before it crazes.
Heritage / conservation area
Council pre-approval on exterior colours, and original-material matching for original finishes. Specialist work — the wrong painter makes it worse, not better.
Steel / metal surfaces
Rust treatment, etch primer, specific topcoats. The wrong system rusts through the new paint inside 18 months.
Dark-to-light colour change
Needs at least three coats, sometimes a tinted primer. A two-coat job won’t cover — ask about coats explicitly.
Mould-prone surfaces
Bathrooms, laundries and north-facing inland walls need anti-microbial primer and a mould-resistant topcoat. Often skipped in cheap quotes.
If your home predates 1970, assume lead is in the older layers until a test says otherwise. Dry-sanding it releases dust that’s hazardous to everyone in the house — which is why lead-safe prep (containment, correct PPE, proper disposal) is a real, costed step, not a line to skip. A quote that treats a heritage repaint exactly like a new-build repaint hasn’t understood the job.
On a heritage or lead-paint home, the cheap quote isn’t just a worse finish — it can be a health risk and a council problem. This is the job to price honestly.
Ask this, exactly
“My home is pre-1970 / render / in a heritage area — have you done this exact kind of work, how do you handle lead-safe prep, and can I see photos of a comparable job?”
A specialist talks comfortably about testing, containment and the correct system. Vagueness here is a reason to get a second opinion before you commit.
Brushline handles lead-safe prep on pre-1970 homes, heritage colour matching and conservation-area work, and the correct render and metal systems. We price these as the specialist jobs they are and show you references before you commit — because on these homes, honesty about scope is the whole point.