Commercial services: Warehouse and industrial painting in Ottawa

Big spaces, working buildings

Warehouses, distribution centres, light industrial units and workshops are big, tall and usually busy. The painting has to fit around shipping, production and forklift traffic. We plan the job by bay or zone, work evenings and weekends where that keeps you running, and agree routes and safety rules with your site lead before we start.

Open ceilings and structure

Painting the deck, joists, ducts and conduit overhead in one colour makes a warehouse or showroom look finished and hides years of dust and mismatched services. White ceilings reflect far more light than bare or rusty steel, which can make an area brighter without adding fixtures. Black or dark grey ceilings give a showroom or fit-out a modern, industrial look.

Overhead work is sprayed from lifts. In stocked or occupied buildings, dry-fall coatings are often specified: the overspray dries in the air before it reaches the floor and can be swept up as dust instead of landing wet on stock and equipment. Racking, machinery and lights are masked or covered, and sprinkler heads are protected, since they can't be painted.

Steel, block and metal

• Structural steel, columns and beams, with loose rust removed and primed before topcoats
• Concrete block walls, filled and painted for a cleaner, brighter finish
• Metal doors, frames, bollards and guardrails in direct-to-metal coatings
• Overhead doors, loading dock areas, stairs and mezzanine railings
• Offices, washrooms and lunchrooms inside the building

Floors and safety colours

Concrete floors in production areas, workshops and back rooms can be ground and coated in epoxy to seal the dust, make spills easy to clean and brighten the space. Safety yellow on columns and bollards, and coloured zones for walkways and storage, help people and forklifts share the floor.

Working safely at height

Most industrial painting happens on scissor and boom lifts. In Ontario, workers who rely on fall protection on construction projects need approved working-at-heights training, and lift operators must be trained on the equipment they use. Lifts stay inside marked work zones away from forklift routes, and no area is closed off without your team knowing first.

Planned around production

Your quote sets out the areas, the products, the order of work and which zones are out of use when, so you can plan shipments and shifts around it. Larger buildings are usually done in phases over several weeks. Smaller units can often be turned around over a weekend or a shutdown.