Atrium Lobby: Limewash at Commercial Scale

A 42-foot lobby wall is not a bigger version of a residential wall. Scale changes how a mineral finish behaves and how it is read.

Limewash dries by carbonation, and on a wall this tall the top and bottom cure at different rates as warm air rises. Working in horizontal bands would have left visible tide lines, so the crew worked in vertical passes off a rolling scaffold, keeping a wet edge from ceiling to floor on every drop.

The tone was tuned on site over two days. The lobby has south glazing and warm evening downlights, and the client wanted the wall to feel cool and architectural by day but soften at night. We landed on a greige with a faint ochre lift that shifts noticeably as the light changes.

Three coats were applied, with the third worked more loosely to preserve visible brushwork — at this scale a perfectly uniform surface reads as paint, and the point of limewash is that it does not.

The finish is sealed only in the lower touch zone, leaving the upper wall fully breathable and free to continue developing its patina.