Painters in
Malvern East.

Malvern East reads quite differently from Malvern. Where Malvern carries boom-era Victorian cement ornament, Malvern East is largely interwar — Californian bungalows, Art Deco and Old English, built in solid brick between the wars.

Deco detail is geometric rather than floral: stepped render bands, curved corners, horizontal banding and steel-framed corner windows. It is crisp when it is right and muddy when it is not, because the appeal is entirely in the sharpness of the lines. Rolling a stepped band rather than cutting it loses the shadow that makes it read from the street.

Solid brick is the other difference. Without a cavity, these walls can move moisture from outside to inside, so rising and lateral damp is more common than in a brick-veneer house of the same age. Paint over a damp wall looks fine for a season and then blisters, so we look for it before quoting rather than after being called back.