Capturing colour in the West End

West End Theatres – colour audits

We’re working on a number of refurbishment projects for historic west end theatres. As with any refurbishment of a historic building, thorough understanding and exploration is essential.

Along with the usual architectural, conditional and measured surveys, we have found a colour audit to be essential – especially so when refurbishment works need to tie in seamlessly with the existing building.

As the buildings are historic many of the internal finishes are often no longer in production so we can’t just order samples for reference as we would with a newer building.

The process

The audit entails identifying every colour of every materials in the building , form stone, tiles, paint, friezes, fabrics and wall papers. We then reference these to a recognised colour reference system and then produce catalogue boards:

catalogue board

Benefits

This can be quite laborious but is definitely worth while.

Not only invaluable for us as the architects to ensure our designs suite in with the existing, but also provides the client with a reference tool to ensure any future maintenance work uses the correct paints.

Once the final designs have been approved, we will then add the new colours of the refurbished areas to this record set.