The Church of The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in Carlton, Nottingham is a 1930’s Italian Basilican style church built by F.J. Bradford. Visitors are welcome and the church can be found at 99 Carlton Hill, Carlton, Nottingham NG4 1FP. More interesting information about the building fabric and architecture can be found here.

The previous decoration was of a mauve and yellow scheme that had been carried out years ago. Our brief was to redecorate the church with a pleasing and appropriate scheme that would benefit the architecture and not be at odds with it.

Prior to creating a new decorative scheme on site investigations were carried out to establish the history of the columns, pilasters and other important architectural features. An important discovery revealed that the over-painted nave columns were made of a reconstructed green marble. This finding was to be incorporated into the forthcoming scheme.

We believe paint is intrinsic with the fabric of a building and the proposed decorative scheme (see left) gave distinction to the architectural style of church. The scheme included traditional oak woodgraining to all interior doors and gold leaf detail to the pilaster capitals and the addition of gilt stars to the domed sanctuary ceiling creating the vault of heaven.

The removal of the mauve overpaint on the columns  (see below) revealed ten green marble columns which were polished to a shine.

Traditional oak woodgraining was applied to the west double doors, the confessional doors and the sacristy door. This traditional paint finish was achieved using oil based paints and scumbles. The technique of brush, comb and figuring was employed over a ground colour to create the faux wood effect (see below).

After all wall colours were applied gold leaf detail was added to the capitals and gold stars were added to the sanctuary ceiling.