With 263 bedrooms and suites, nineteen meeting rooms, numerous corridors and lift lobbies, not to mention the treatment rooms in the new spa, it’s a never ending task just to stay on top of the painting, keeping everything in pristine condition for our guests. ”Dean manages a team of four men who are responsible for the full gamut of maintenance works at the hotel, which includes the ongoing cycle of painting and minor decorative repairs throughout the 14-storey building.

“We’re the only five star hotel in the city centre and we set ourselves exceptionally high standards,” said Dean. “Our guests include visiting pop stars, international footballers and top-flight executives who expect to stay in beautifully maintained surroundings, and this means that decorating accounts for a very high proportion of my team’s workload”.

In a bid to free up some of this time for other duties and extend the redecoration cycle as long as possible, the Radisson Edwardian has recently switched to new Crown Trade Clean Extreme Scrubbable Matt emulsion after hearing about its technical and aesthetic properties from local specialist decorating merchant, Ace Décor.

“We’re very particular about the coatings we use,” says Dean. “For a start we have a forward looking environmental policy which impacts on all our operations. This means we try to use water-borne, low VOC formulations wherever possible. The new Clean Extreme Scrubbable Matt emulsion fits the bill as it has a very low VOC rating.” 

There are also clear financial benefits of using water-borne coatings in hotels, especially those with full occupancy rates, as Dean points out: “Lingering unpleasant solvent odours and slow drying paint finishes put our rooms out of action for much longer than we would like, and that costs us money. We’ve found that Clean Extreme Matt dries very rapidly and has very little odour indeed so we can get rooms back into service very quickly after repainting.”

Aesthetics are equally important, says Dean: “We’re keen to use really flat matt paints to give us a very chalky contemporary finish, but normal water-borne matts can’t really stand up to the punishing conditions of a busy hotel like ours. We know from experience that we need to protect our walls with a coating that cures to a really tough and durable finish that can take a lot of knocks.

“This is particularly important in the corridors where heavy bags and suitcases and the housemaids’ trolleys frequently scuff against the paintwork. Until the new Crown Trade product came along there wasn’t a water-borne coating available that combined the really robust durability we need with the totally sheen-free flat finish we prefer.”

Colour choice was also critical. Before switching to Clean Extreme Scrubbable Matt, Dean and his team wanted to be sure that a perfect colour match could be achieved with existing paint finishes and the Radisson’s corporate colourways. Ace Décor was able to provide this reassurance for them.  As the decorating specialist is a fully equipped Crown Trade colourzone centre, it has advanced spectrophotometry and mixing equipment on the premises, enabling Crown Trade coatings to be tinted in shades that exactly match any colour sample presented for scanning.

“Last but not least, our paint finishes also have to be completely washable,” adds Neil. “I don’t want to have to send my men in with paintbrushes and dustsheets every time there’s an accidental splash or spill, dirty handmarks or greasy fingerprints on a wall. I want our cleaning staff to be able to scrub all our broadwall areas clean, without the paint finish coming off and leaving burnishing marks on the wall.

“We successfully trialled the new paint in our spa treatment rooms where the potential for greasy marks and handprints is pretty high, given the liberal use of essential oils, moisturisers and various other beauty products in there. We found that even these challenging oily marks could be wiped away easily leaving no traces at all.”

Clean Extreme Scrubbable Matt emulsion is now being used throughout the Radisson Edwardian Manchester. The hotel management team is looking forward to reaping long-term benefits of extended redecoration cycles and more immediate gains in terms of returning rooms to full service in the shortest possible time after redecoration work has been completed.