Elm & Harlow

A husband and wife who paint finished homes across the Greater Ottawa Area. Cabinets, mouldings, staircases, and the trim work nobody else wants to quote.

Call for a quote See the work
A primary bedroom with a deep charcoal feature wall behind a channel-tufted bed.
Charcoal, on the primary bedroom wall

Two people, one crew,

every wall cut in

by hand.

Colours we've put on real walls

Every chip below is sampled from the photograph beside it, not from a swatch book. Pick one.

A primary bedroom with a deep charcoal feature wall behind a channel-tufted bed.
#312D29 Charcoal
Primary bedroom

Flat charcoal on the feature wall, ceiling cut in the same tone so the corner disappears.

What we're called in for

  1. Interiors Whole houses, single rooms, ceilings, and the repair work that has to happen first: filling, sanding, caulking, priming.
  2. Kitchen cabinets Doors off, degreased, sanded, sprayed and rehung. A new colour on the boxes you already have, for a fraction of a new kitchen.
  3. Trim & mouldings Baseboards, casings, crown, wainscoting and panel-moulding walls. Fine work, and the part people look at closely.
  4. Staircases Risers, stringers, spindles and railings, including the two-storey stairwells most crews would rather not quote.
  5. Feature walls Slat walls, shiplap, accent colours, and wallpaper hung flat and matched at the seams.
  6. Exteriors Garage doors, front doors, soffits and trim. The details that change the front of a house from the street.
A white spiral staircase with a curved glass balustrade.
A full-height dark slatted feature wall beside a bedside lamp.
A brick house with the front door and window trim painted black.
A bathroom with a black vanity and an arched black-framed mirror.
A bare wooden staircase stripped back and sanded, ready for primer. A dark slatted fireplace wall, freshly finished around the insert. A wall of white panel moulding, freshly finished. An entry hall with arched double front doors, freshly painted.

How a job runs

Most of a good paint job happens before any colour goes on. This is the order we work in, every time.

  1. 01

    Cover everything

    Floors, furniture, railings, light fittings. If it isn't being painted it gets wrapped, which is why our before photos look like a crime scene.

  2. 02

    Fix the wall first

    Fill, sand, caulk the gaps, spot-prime the repairs. Paint doesn't hide a bad wall, it points at it.

  3. 03

    Cut in by hand

    Every edge cut with a brush, so there are no tape lines to peel later. Then rolled or sprayed depending on the surface.

  4. 04

    Walk it with you

    We put the room back together, then go through it with you in daylight and fix anything you point at before we leave.

Two of us, on every job

Elm & Harlow is a husband-and-wife painting team. There's no rotating crew and no subcontractors. The people who quote your house are the people who paint it, and the same two people are there on the last day as on the first.

Most of our work is in finished, lived-in homes across Ottawa: kitchens people cook in tonight, staircases the kids use, bedrooms that need to be sleepable again by evening. That shapes how we work more than anything else.

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A long entrance hallway with a chandelier and a sunburst mirror.
A white shaker kitchen with a marble island and pendant lights.