PIGMENTO
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Card 01 · No. 042 Signal Red

Fictional concept · Brimmscale build N°03

Every wall gets a number.

Decorative painting and bespoke colour for Rhode Island houses that deserve better than builder white. Ground and mixed on Harris Avenue, written down by formula, and laid on your wall by the four people who mixed it.

Book a paint-outOpen the colour card
A fan of plain colour cards spread in an arc on a white surface, reds through blues and greensThe house deck · 240 tones

The bench, in numbers

240
tones on the shelf
14
years on the trade
4
people, the same four
0
rolls of masking tape

Every tone we have ever mixed is written down by formula, so the hall you paint this spring can be touched in ten years from the same book.

Rows of small glass apothecary bottles filled with dry pigment — reds, ochres, greens and chalk white — on a glass shelfPigment library · Bay 3
Card 02 · No. 001 Chalk

We grind our own.

Nothing on this page left the studio in a factory can. Two hundred and forty jars of dry pigment, a set of scales, and a book of formulas going back to 2012.

Five open jars of paint seen from above: yellow, orange, violet, green and deep blue, freshly stirredTinting bench · five batches on the go

A tone with a number can be mixed again in ten years, when the hall gets knocked and nobody can remember what went on it. That is the only reason this card exists — and it is why we will not sell you a colour we cannot write down.

Interiors are zero-VOC acrylic. Lime and mineral coats are made here from putty and dry earth, weighed to the gram against the book, and logged with the date, the batch and the wall they went on. If a wall gets damaged you call the bench, not a call centre, and the same four people come back with the same formula.

Formula card · No. 001 Chalk

  • Titanium white94
  • Raw umber04
  • Yellow ochre02
  • BinderDead flat

Weighed, not eyeballed. Every jar carries the batch date on the shoulder.

A fine flat brush loaded with dark paint, laid against a taut primed surfaceCut freehand
Card 03 · No. 126 Mill Ochre

What it costs, before you ask.

Published rates, per square foot of surface. The number you get in writing is this number, plus or minus what your walls actually need.

Square feet of surface, not of floor. A ten-foot ceiling costs more than an eight-foot one over the same footprint, and we would rather say so here than surprise you in an estimate.

Metric shown for every rate · updated Jan 2026

  • 01

    $40.90 / m²

    Interior repaint

    $3.80per ft²

    Walls, ceilings and trim. Full prep, two finish coats, zero-VOC acrylic in the sheen you pick.

  • 02

    $77.50 / m²

    Limewash & mineral

    $7.20per ft²

    Breathable lime over plaster, brick or render. Mixed on the bench from dry pigment, never off a shelf.

  • 03

    $156.10 / m²

    Venetian plaster

    $14.50per ft²

    Burnished polished plaster, five to seven passes, sealed with wax.

  • 04

    + $18 per linear ft of frame

    Cabinet & millwork

    $95per door

    Doors come off, get degreased, sprayed and cured flat in the shop, then go back on their own hinges.

  • 05

    drawn on site, never projected

    Ornament & murals

    from$2,400per wall

    Borders, ceiling roses, stencilled friezes and full murals. Cartoon first, then brushwork.

  • 06

    $58.10 / m²

    Exterior & facade

    $5.40per ft²

    Scrape back to sound substrate, prime bare, two coats. Ladders to three storeys, ropes above that.

Every job starts here

The paint-out — $450

A site visit, then three full-size keys per room painted straight onto your wall — two feet square, two coats — so you can look at them at 8am, at 2pm and at 8pm before you commit. Credited in full against any job over $4,000.

Book the paint-out
Card 04 · No. 318 Weir Lime

Nothing here came off a shelf.

Seven house tones, the formula that makes each one, and the surface it actually went on. Pick a chip and the card turns over.

Chips are shown as mixed, not as printed.
Screens lie by about half a step — that
is what the paint-out is for.

Chalk

No. 001
#DCD6C7

Sheen
Dead flat · 3 coats
Went on
Stair hall, Wickenden St
Mix, by parts
Titanium white 94 · raw umber 4 · yellow ochre 2

Our white, and the only tone we keep in volume. Warm enough that it never turns blue at four in the afternoon, and dead flat, so a stair hall reads as plaster instead of as paint. If somebody has told you your hall needs a bright white, come and look at this one on a wall first.

A narrow stair hall painted flat off-white, looking down the treads past a window with a red blindNo. 001 · as laid
Concept build — stand-in photography. On your site this is your own job, shot the week you finished it.

Concept build — the tones, the formulas and the addresses above were invented for this page. On your site this is your own card, and the photograph beside each chip is your own job.

Card 05 · No. 611 Harbour Green

Nine frames off this year.

The roll runs in the order the frames were shot — the brush at the end of a paint-out day, the walls we scraped, the keys we brushed out and the elevations we finished.

Half of these frames are the part of the job nobody photographs: a south wall failing in sheets, distemper under lining paper, a mill floor before anyone priced it. That is where the money actually goes.

Drawdown 01 / 09 · drag the strip

Macro of a brush head loaded with many colours at once, bristles glossy with wet paintFrame 01
End of a paint-out dayOne brush at five o'clock, carrying every tone that went up on the keys that day. It gets washed out to white before it is put away, which is why it is still in service after fourteen years.
A rendered wall where yellow paint has failed and peeled away in sheets, exposing grey render underneathFrame 02
No. 126 · as foundEleven summers of ochre coming off a south wall in sheets. This is what gets scraped back to sound render before anybody is allowed to talk about colour.
A textured wall carrying two test bands of paint side by side, a pale green against a warm stone colourFrame 03
Paint-out · two keysTwo keys brushed straight onto the render and left up for a week. You choose at eight in the morning and again at eight at night — never under a shop light.
An empty period room with two tall casement windows, bare blown plaster walls and a boarded pine ceilingFrame 04
Job 214 · day oneBenefit St, the morning we took the room. Two casements, plaster blown at every reveal, and a boarded pine ceiling nobody had touched in forty years.
A stripped industrial room with a riveted vaulted ceiling, distressed brick walls and green iron doorsFrame 05
Mill floor · surveyA mill floor on Valley St, walked before we priced it. Riveted vault, iron doors in their original green, and brick that has never carried a coat.
A brick wall carrying a cream limewash, the courses and mortar joints still legible through the coatFrame 06
No. 001 · limewashChalk over stock brick, three passes. Every course still reads through the coat, which is the entire point of putting lime on a wall instead of plastic.
A small empty room with pink walls and torn lining paper hanging in strips over a bare windowFrame 07
Job 227 · strip outHope St, lining paper coming down in strips. Under it, distemper straight onto plaster — nothing you can safely put a modern coat over.
A wooden ladder leaning against a cream rendered parapet wall under a bright skyFrame 08
No. 001 · south elevationSecond week on a south elevation. Timber ladder, no scaffold over the garden, and the parapet line cut freehand against the sky.
A painter on rope access working the render at the top corner of a building against a clear skyFrame 09
Side return · 3 storeysThird storey on ropes rather than a scaffold, because the neighbour's beds were under it. Anything higher than a ladder and this is how we get there.

The handover — what clients said

A bedroom corner with a deep green wall, framed prints and a warm lamp, washed back behind the quote

Card 06 · The handover

4.9 / 5 across 118 jobs · invented for this concept

“I have looked for the line and I cannot find it”

Eleven years of woodsmoke on the parlor ceiling, and two other outfits told me the whole thing had to be skim-coated. Pigmento washed it, sealed the stain and put three coats on. I have stood under it looking for the line and I cannot find it. The bay window alone took two of them a full day of cutting in.

Dana Whitcomb

Providence, RI · 1861 Federal — parlor, stair hall and bay

01 / 04

Card 07 · No. 388 Boat Mint

Come and see the bench.

Where the shop is, who picks up the phone, and how an order actually gets raised. Nothing on this card is a lead magnet — the number rings a bench, not a call centre.

Reach somebody

(401) 555-0184bench@pigmento.example

Demo details — the number, the address and the mailbox are invented, and the links go nowhere real

The shop

214 Harris Ave, Bay 3
Providence, RI 02909

The roller door on the left. The pigment library is the wall of jars behind the bench — you are welcome to pull any of them off the shelf and hold it up to the window.

Hours

Monday – Thursday
7:30am – 5:00pm
Friday
7:30am – 3:00pm
Saturday
9:00am – 1:00pm, by appointment
Sunday
Closed

Shops and restaurants: we run a night crew, 7pm to 2am, so you never close for us. We work Providence, Bristol and Newport counties, plus southeastern Massachusetts as far as New Bedford.

Order card No. 0143

Demo form

Demo only — this form does not send, store or transmit anything. Pigmento is a fictional studio.

Card 08 · No. 733 Ladder Blue

Read them before the estimate.

The six things people ask on the walkthrough. Written out, numbered, and left open — you should not have to click anything to read the terms.

  1. Note 01

    How a job is priced

    By surface, not by floor area — a room with a ten-foot ceiling costs more than the same footprint at eight. The rate card is the starting point; prep condition, how many tones change on one wall and how much cutting in there is move it up or down. The walkthrough is free and the written estimate reaches you inside 48 hours, itemised by room.

  2. Note 02

    Whether you have to move out

    No, and almost nobody does. We work one room at a time, floors and furniture go under cotton and plastic before anything else happens, sanders run on HEPA extraction, and the room is put back before we leave for the day.

  3. Note 03

    What actually goes on the wall

    Interiors get zero-VOC acrylic in dead flat, matte or eggshell. Lime and mineral coats are mixed on our own bench from dry pigment and lime putty, which is why the tones on this page carry numbers and not marketing names. If your architect has specified a national brand we will use it — we will just tell you honestly where it is worth the money.

  4. Note 04

    What a paint-out is, and why it is $450

    It is a week of work. We visit, measure the light, and paint three full-size keys per room — two feet square, directly on your wall, two coats, not a card taped up. Then you live with them and look at them at 8am, at 2pm and at 8pm before deciding. The $450 comes straight off any job over $4,000.

  5. Note 05

    Winter work

    Interiors run all year. Exteriors run April to late October in Rhode Island — under about 50°F the film will not coalesce properly and you get a coat that looks fine in November and fails in March. We would rather book you for spring than take the money now.

  6. Note 06

    If something goes wrong afterwards

    Five years on interior work and three on exterior, against peeling, blistering and lap marks. It is not a form to fill in — you call the bench, we come back, and we fix it. In fourteen years that call has come nine times, and every one of them was ours to fix.

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