When people think of Howard Naish, most picture us in a Victorian terrace in Balham or an Edwardian semi in Dulwich, and a huge amount of our work is exactly that. But we also take on commercial jobs across London, and over the years we've sanded and refinished floors in schools, churches, theatres, offices, restaurants, gyms, and large halls.
The difference between a commercial job and a domestic one isn't just scale. It's planning, access, dust control, fast turnaround, and working around an operation that can't really stop. We thought it was time to show that side of what we do, starting with a recent project at Emanuel School in Battersea.
Why Commercial Floors Are Different
A 20 square metre living room and a 200 square metre school hall are the same job in principle. Same machines. Same grit progression. Same care over corners, edges, and finish. What changes is everything around the work.
Commercial jobs almost always need:
- Tight scheduling: schools want it done over half-term, restaurants over a Sunday-into-Monday, theatres between productions. The window is fixed.
- Bigger areas with no shortcuts: a school hall might be 10 times the size of a domestic room, but it still has to be sanded and finished to the same standard, edge to edge.
- Dust extraction that actually works: our machines have proper extraction built in, but on a commercial job that becomes non-negotiable. Furniture, sports equipment, stage curtains, wall art: none of it can be left coated in dust.
- Working around the operation: staff coming in and out, deliveries, alarms, security, sign-in procedures. Every site has its own rules.
- Health and safety paperwork: risk assessments, method statements, insurance certificates, DBS checks. It's all part of the job.
We do all of this as standard. The craft side is identical to the domestic work. We just bring more of the same kit and plan the job around the building's diary.
The Project: Emanuel School Hall, Battersea
Emanuel School is an independent school in Battersea, SW11. Their main hall is the centrepiece of the building: a large, double-height room with stage lighting, original portrait paintings on the walls, panelled lower walls, and a beautiful wide-plank oak floor running the full length of the hall.
That floor sees serious daily use. Assemblies, drama, music, exams, visiting speakers, sports activities, prize-givings, parents' evenings. Years of footfall, scuff marks from chairs and equipment, and a finish that had clouded over and lost its life. The school wanted it sanded back and refinished to bring it back to looking like the day it was laid.
The Brief
- Sand the entire hall floor back to bare timber
- Refinish to a clean, natural-looking matte oak, no stain, just the wood
- Complete the job during a school break window: fixed start and finish dates
- Leave the building immaculate, with no dust on the portraits, panelling, stage curtains, or seating
The Floor
The hall has a wide-plank engineered oak floor, laid in long straight runs across the room. The boards have lovely natural grain and knot variation that had been hidden under years of yellowed lacquer.
The Process
Same process we follow on any large hardwood job, scaled up:
- Hummel 60 grit: first cut across the entire hall, taking off the old finish and levelling the boards
- Flip 60: full perimeter, including the stage edge, doorways, and the recessed bays under the portraits
- Hummel 80: second cut, removing the 60 grit scratch pattern
- Flip 80: perimeter again, matching the belt sander grit
- Orbital: full perimeter blend, removing the circular marks left by the edger so the edges flow seamlessly into the centre of the hall
- Four-pad 80, then 120: the four-pad machine gives a beautifully even finish across a large floor and is essential on a job this size
- Hand scraping the corners: every corner of the hall, all the awkward angles around the stage and the recessed bays, finished by hand with a triangle sander to match the rest of the floor
The whole hall was sanded down through the grits over the first two days.
The Finish
We applied a clear matte hardwax oil, three coats, denibbing in between, for a finish that protects the floor against heavy traffic but still feels and looks like raw oak. Hardwax oil is our go-to for commercial spaces because it's hard-wearing, easy to spot-repair if a section gets damaged, and looks far more natural than a thick lacquer.
The Kinds of Commercial Properties We Work On
We've worked on commercial floors across London including:
- Schools and colleges: assembly halls, sports halls, dining halls, classrooms, corridors
- Churches and chapels: nave floors, vestries, hall floors used for community events
- Theatres and arts venues: front-of-house, stages, dressing rooms
- Restaurants, cafés, and bars: dining areas, bar floors, kitchen-adjacent service areas
- Offices: open-plan office floors, boardrooms, reception areas
- Gyms, dance studios, and yoga studios: sprung floors, hardwood studio floors
- Retail and showrooms: high-end retail floors, gallery spaces
- Pubs and members' clubs: bar floors, function rooms
If your space has a wooden floor that's seen better days, we can almost certainly bring it back. We'll always do a free site visit first so we can see what we're dealing with and give you a proper quote.
How We Work Around Your Operation
This is the part most commercial clients care about most, and rightly so. A floor sanding job is loud, dusty, and disruptive if it's not handled properly. Here's how we keep it under control:
- We work to your diary, not ours. Out of hours, weekends, half-term, between productions, between bookings, whatever fits.
- Dust extraction on every machine. Our Lagler Hummel and Lagler Flip both run with high-extraction units, and we use a four-pad machine for the final cut which is much cleaner than older buffers.
- Full dust seal of adjoining rooms. We tape off doorways, vents, and any sensitive equipment in the space.
- Protective sheeting. Furniture, fixtures, soft furnishings, AV kit: anything we can't move gets covered.
- Daily clean-down. We don't leave a job in a state at the end of the day, even mid-process.
- Final hand-back clean. When we leave, the floor is finished and the room is back in service.
We're fully insured, Checkatrade verified, and have the paperwork side covered for any commercial site that needs it.
Why Choose Howard Naish for Commercial Work
We're not a big national contractor. We're a small, hands-on, family-feel business, and that's actually the reason commercial clients keep coming back to us.
- Dean and Luke are on every job. No site managers, no different crew showing up. The same two pairs of eyes that quoted the job are there doing the work.
- 22 years of hands-on experience in domestic and commercial sanding across London.
- All our own professional kit: Lagler Hummel, Lagler Flip, four-pad, orbital, buffer, and triangle sander. Nothing hired, nothing borrowed.
- 5-star Google rating across 45+ reviews: every one of them genuine.
- Fully insured and Checkatrade verified.
- Personal, direct contact. When you call us, you speak to Dean. When we quote, the price doesn't change. When we say we'll be there at 7am on a Saturday, we're there at 7am on a Saturday.
Whether it's a school hall in Battersea, a church floor in Wandsworth, a restaurant in Clapham, or an office in the City, we'd love to come and have a look.
Call us: 020 3131 0122
Email: info@howardnaish.co.uk
Or book a free site visit. We'll walk the space, talk through finish options, and give you a clear, honest quote with no obligation.