Traditional house: paintwork, pergola and Santa Catarina tiling
Exterior paintwork in deep ochre red, a new solid timber pergola and the Santa Catarina floor tiles brought back.
This is a traditional two-storey Algarve house, with a parapet and stone surrounds picked out in white. The owner did not want the usual white: he chose a saturated ochre red, a colour with roots in the region but one that takes some nerve and, above all, takes a pigment that can stand the sun.
We used a high-grade façade paint with a stable pigment, because a low-grade red turns washed-out pink in two summers. Before the colour came the usual work: washing down, removing loose paint, treating cracks and priming. The stone surrounds, the window frames and the round window were left white, so the composition of the façade does not disappear inside the colour.
The pergola was built new in solid timber, with the beams carried on posts painted the same colour as the house, so that it reads as part of the building rather than an addition. On the terrace, the Santa Catarina tiles had years of accumulated dirt and organic staining; they were washed and treated without aggressive stripping, which would have taken off the patina that gives this tile its value.