Repainting before moving in to Geneva: painting an empty home

The empty home: the ideal working conditions

An empty apartment is every painter’s dream, and that works in your favour. Once the furniture is in, every wall has to be painted around a bookcase, a sofa or a bed; things are sheeted, moved and put back. In an empty home, none of that applies.

In practical terms, painting before moving in changes everything:

• Full access to surfaces — walls right into the corners, ceilings, skirting boards, reveals, doors, the inside of cupboards: everything is reachable in a single move, without working around or dismantling anything.
• No furniture to protect — no sheeting, no moving heavy items. The painter protects the floors and masks the joinery, then works without interruption.
• Even paint everywhere — a whole wall is painted in one pass, with no forced joint behind a piece of furniture. The result is uniform from one room to the next.
• Drying and smell with no disruption — no one is sleeping in freshly painted rooms. Ventilation is unrestricted and drying happens with no constraint of use.
• A smooth job — with no obstacles and no furniture being moved back and forth, the work progresses more simply and coordination is clearer.

In Geneva, where the window between signing the lease and moving in is often short, this efficiency counts double. To prepare the home in practice, see our checklist before the painter arrives.

Take everything on before life settles in

The empty home is also the only moment when you can harmonise everything without compromise. Once the boxes are in, every change of colour becomes a job in itself, with furniture to protect and partial touch-ups.

Using the pre-move window lets you take on, in a single job:

Element	What you take on in an empty home	Why it is simpler when empty
Walls	Change of colour, evening out the shades	Whole wall in one pass, no working around furniture
Ceilings	Neutral white, removing marks from use	Direct access, no furniture below to sheet
Woodwork and doors	Re-enamelling, reveals, skirting boards	Sanding and drying without disrupting room use
Built-in cupboards	Interiors and fronts refreshed	Empty shelves, full access to the backs
Damp rooms	Finish suited to kitchen and bathroom	No appliance or unit to protect

Taking everything on together gives a consistent result — wall colour, ceiling white and woodwork enamel matched — and limits handling compared with touch-ups spread out over time. The choice of colours and finishes is settled during the visit; our guide to finishes helps you weigh up matt, eggshell, satin and enamel for each room.

The order of works: painting before the finished floors

Painting before moving in does not mean painting at just any moment. When other works are planned, the order matters, and painting has its precise place in the sequence.

The basic rule: walls and ceilings are painted before the finished floors are laid. You paint up high first, where roller splashes and drips are unavoidable, then the floor covering is laid over surfaces that are already dry and clean. The reverse would expose a new parquet or tiled floor to soiling.

A few useful coordination markers:

1. Surface preparation — filling, sanding, suitable primer. This is the basis of everything, detailed on our interior painting service.
2. Ceilings, then walls — top down, so that overspray does not soil an already finished surface.
3. Woodwork and enamel — doors, reveals and skirting boards, in line with the schedule of the other trades.
4. Laying the finished floors — once the paint is dry.

Renovhome SA carries out the painting and finishes. When laying the floors, the kitchen or other lots falls to other trades, we honestly fit in around their schedule and coordinate our work at the right moment. For the full sequence of a renovation, see our page on the order of works in a renovation.

Scheduling the painting between the keys and the van in Geneva

The Geneva rental market is tight: between the handover of keys and the move, the window is often short, sometimes just a few weeks. Used well, it is enough to repaint in good conditions; poorly anticipated, it closes fast.

A few markers so as not to be caught out:

• Schedule the quote visit as soon as you get the keys — or even when you sign the lease, to leave room for surface preparation.
• Allow for drying — between coats, drying takes a few hours depending on the product data sheet; a residual smell may linger for a day or two after the last coat. So it is better to finish painting a few days before the van, not the day before.
• Coordinate keys and access — for an empty home, access by a key arranged in advance is usually enough, with no need to be present throughout. Think about the common areas: lift, goods lift, unloading bay, entrance code.
• Inform the managing agent if you are a tenant — telling the agency makes access easier and avoids misunderstandings.

In Geneva’s older housing stock — buildings in Eaux-Vives, Servette, Petit-Saconnex — ceilings and woodwork are often marked by use and are well worth taking on while the home is empty. In new builds and recent renovations, the focus is more on colour and finish. In both cases, a dedicated coordination contact follows the job from measuring to handover and liaises on access and timing.

Quote, warranty and the right time to decide

Repainting before moving in is a decision to take early, because the right window is the empty home. An on-site visit allows the real state of the surfaces to be assessed, room by room, and a detailed quote to be drawn up with no obligation.

Two things make your project more secure:

• A detailed room-by-room quote, drawn up after the visit, describing the surfaces, the preparation and the finishes chosen. This clarity helps you decide between taking everything on or targeting certain rooms.
• The two-year legal warranty (Art. 371 CO) on defects in the work: during this period, defects covered by the warranty are put right.

Renovhome SA is registered with the Geneva Commercial Register (UID CHE-356.898.007), holds professional liability insurance whose certificates are provided on request, applies the same protocol from one job to the next with touch-ups checked under raking light, and uses paints with low VOC emissions. If you are about to collect the keys to a home in Geneva, this is the ideal moment: request a free quote or get in touch.