Tintswalo Summer House by David Brits in Cape Town

Tintswalo Summer House

Tintswalo Summer House is a 12-room boutique hotel in a restored 1904 Edwardian building at Glencairn, False Bay. We were commissioned to paint the whole thing — exterior façades, pool floor, bar, dining room, lobby timeline, and every corridor. The most extensive single-client commission the studio has undertaken in Cape Town. The brief was not a single wall. It was a building. Tintswalo's design direction for Summer House is uncompromising — colour-saturated, detail-rich, layered with narrative. Every surface is considered. Our work spans the full property: a large-scale pink baroque acanthus mural wrapping the exterior pool walls; ‘Come on in, hot stuff’ lettered into the pool floor; a martini glass and jewelled hand painted in the bar; a field of pink cake illustrations in the dining room; a hand-painted history timeline in the lobby charting the building from its 1904 origins to 2025; and hand-painted directional signage and room numbers throughout the corridors. No two rooms asked for the same thing. The exterior baroque demanded scale and confidence — a hotel that announces itself. The bar mural is intimate, witty, almost whispered. The cake dining room is exuberant and graphic. The lobby timeline is archival in register, typographic, precise. The wayfinding is functional but painted — the studio’s lettering vocabulary applied to the smallest decisions. Taken together the murals are the hotel’s personality made visible.

Meet the Artist

David

Cape Town, South Africa

Cape Town mural artist with a dual mastery: traditional hand-painted signwriting and large-scale contemporary murals. My team and I bring a sign painter's precision and a muralist's eye to every wall. We specialised in hand-painted signage and logos, reverse glass painting, custom painted feature walls and building-scale murals. Painted by hand, on-site, at any scale and on any surface. Signwriting demands precision: clean lettering, accurate proportion, surfaces prepared to last outdoors for years. Murals let us work at scale and bring composition, drawing, and image-making into public space. Alongside the wall work, I maintain a contemporary sculpture practice, which keeps the studio side of my work - material, form, and concept - active. Established in 2011 as a way to bring beauty into the world, my business collaborates with both individuals and the country's top brands in the fields of hospitality, retail, education and science. We work closely with clients to design for the specific space. Executed with a high level of craftsmanship and a focus on providing brilliant service, from Sea Point to Saudi Arabia, our work adorns sidewalks and buildings in cities across South Africa and - increasingly- the world.

More artwork by David