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Renowned mid-century decorator Billy Baldwin would have loved this bathroom by Canadian decorative artist Robert Sangster. One of Baldwin’s most revered rooms was his own Manhattan studio apartment, which he famously wrapped in dark chocolate paint, lacquered to a supremely high gloss. There’s nothing subtle about the treatment, which makes it a bit unusual for Sangster who has built a thriving business and excellent reputation as a decorative painter of quietly luxurious surfaces.

See the doorway above left? Would you believe it’s a common steel door that’s been painstakingly painted to blend with the surrounding wood trim? Sangster’s oeuvre rises head and shoulders above the paint effects and faux finishes popular in the 1980s but now mostly reviled. The green striae cross-hatch treatment, above right, looks like whiskered denim and is indicative of Sangster’s finesse.

After my visit to Sangster’s studio, the artist emailed me to ask that I not refer to him as a faux finisher: “I never use that term,” he says, “mostly because it has long since ceased to look like anything else except in the case of faux bois (fake wood) and is an old-fashioned term that trivializes what I do.”

One wall of Sangster’s downtown Toronto studio is papered with samples of his work, paint treatments that could easily stand in for some of the world’s most luxe wallpapers. In fact, it’s the exorbitant cost of some of those papers that makes Sangster’s not insubstantial fees seem reasonable.

One aspect of Sangster’s portfolio that I especially love is his painted floors. “One of my clients has an elderly husband and she was afraid of him tripping over area rugs yet the furniture needed something to be ‘on’ so I painted them a carpet.”

Sangster has been very busy for the past week readying the reception hall of the Junior League Toronto Showhouse (under the direction of Michael Batterbee & Associates and Barbara Nelson Design), which opens to the public on Friday (May 8 – 31). If you’re in the Toronto area, don’t miss this opportunity to view the swank McLean House re-imagined by more than 50 of the city’s top designers.

“It’s always rewarding to work on a project like the Showhouse,” says Sangster, “but it’s really mayhem on site right now; there’s essentially an entire design team in every room. But from what I’ve seen so far, I think it’s going to be a VERY successful year.”

Sangster doesn’t restrict his work to walls. He’s an expert furniture painter with a real talent for gold and silver leafing. “I love the technique,” he says, “you can make anything look fantastic with leaf whether it’s gold, silver or aluminum (as on the console and mirror above).”

Photos courtesy of Robert Sangster Surface Design.