"Apex" Living Room
The feature wall in this living room is papered in Cole & Son’s non-woven Apex wallpaper over a horizontally laid lining paper. Such a strong geometric pattern would be very unforgiving on the eye if the wall on which it were laid was not absolutely rectalinear and the paper applied true to it. Here it fits perfectly. The vertical repeat had to be considered so that an uncomfortable small portion was not left at one end. Here it is aligned to cut off at the top of the wall along the border of the pattern leaving a bit less than half the pattern at the bottom of the wall. The ceiling is painted with Dulux Pure Brilliant White matt emulsion and the walls and woodwork with Farrow & Ball’s “Strong White”, which is a cool very pale grey – Modern Emulsion for the walls and Estate Eggshell for the skirting and cupboard doors. This pale grey helps ensure the white colour in the wallpaper and the white formica table top ‘pop’ because of their bright contrast. The glazed door is painted in Farrow & Ball’s “Elephant’s Breath” estate eggshell.
"Cow Parsley" Living Room
Cole & Son’s “Cow Parsley” non woven wallpaper decorates this living room feature wall. It is a 21st century pattern but evokes a mid 20th century style suited to this high rise 1970s flat, a bit of countryside in the centre of the city. Horizontal lining paper was first applied over the old plaster wall that required several large areas of levelling with interior filler to repair where electricians had rewired. The two layers of wallpaper have been cut around both the flush painted architrave of the hatch, a precise line to cut particularly its visibility at a point in the eye line of diners. The walls are Farrow & Ball “Off White” estate emulsion and the ceiling, skirting and architrave are Farrow & Ball “Slipper Satin” estate emulsion and estate eggshell.
"Waxed Cork" Living Room Floor
The rich looking hard wearing satin finish to this cork floor is achieved with three layers of Osmo hard wax oil which I applied with a cloth. The floor is laid with 6mm thick natural Portuguese cork tiles from Siesta which was glued onto the concrete floor with a water based adhesive and gently sanded before the hard wax oil was applied. The cork is firm but soft under foot, helpfully sound deadening and a rapidly renewable material making it very environmentally friendly.
"Lichen" Bedroom
This bedroom has a large west facing window on the 10th floor which fills it with light in the afternoon and evening. It’s a city centre location so there is also a lot of ambient light. The mid green “Lichen” colour by Farrow and Ball cools the heat of the natural light, creating a neutral warmth. It also helps reduce the ambient light levels at night that can leak past curtains, even black-outs such as in this room. The choice of the estate emulsion finish eliminates any sense of glossy reflection that is typical from a standard vinyl emulsion, which would create a white glare in a room like this with large windows. Two coats of paint were needed over white. The ceiling is Farrow & Ball “Slipper Satin” estate emulsion and the windows Farrow & Ball “Pitch Black”. The radiator is the manufacturers standard white satin finish.
"Slipper Satin" Kitchen
I designed this bespoke kitchen and employed Francis Darbishire to build it using birch ply for the main box of each cabinet and MDF for the doors. MDF is a great surface for painting, though requires several layers of paint with plenty of gentle sanding in between to achieve a finish that can be mistaken for spray painting. I painted all these cabinets with Farrow & Ball’s “Slipper Satin” estate eggshell on the outside and rich red “Incarnadine” on the inside using a small foam roller. I commissioned a wood turner to make the cabinet handles from an off cut from an large-stave oak worksurface. These are glued into recessed holes cut within the cabinet doors and painted with tough acrylic Ronseal’s Diamond Hard Floor Varnish. The splashback to the Silestone worksurface is painted with superbly durable Farrow & Ball’s “Elephant’s Breath” estate eggshell. The light is a one-off I designed to recycle spare Kenwood Chef mixer attachments made with a MDF disc painted to match the cabinets.
"Vårklockor" Hallway
This entrance hallway was livened up with a bold floral wallpaper called “Vårklockor” designed by Joseph Frank in the 1940s and made as a thick non woven paper by Swedish brand Svenkst Tenn. The staircase behind this wall is not papered which left a potentially vulnerable bare edge of paper on the corner of the wall. To protect this corner and provide an attractive detail I cut and varnished a slim right angle of oak and glued it with a clear CT1 adhesive. The oak co-ordinates with the oak transition on the floor which I installed between the fitted door mat and staircase carpet.
"Cornforth" Bedroom
“Cornforth White” is an easy neutral cool from Farrow & Ball painted here in the non reflective estate emulsion. The face of the door is painted in Farrow and Ball “Elephant’s Breath” estate eggshell and the rest of the woodwork in the room is painted in Dulux’s “Pure Brilliant White” Trade Diamond Egghsell. The vintage bed was refreshed with two coats of black Hammerite satin paint.
"Chinese Blue" Loo
A small windowless loo is a potentially dark and easily grubby space. The previous owners had tried to address these challenges by tiling it to waist hight with glossy cream tiles and painting the rest to match. But the single ceiling lighting was gloomy and cast big shadows and tiles are not as easy to clean as a smooth wall. I redesigned the loo with a large recessed illuminated display area behind the toilet which casts a bright sideways light into the room, as if it were a window. The matt white Mosa porcelain tiles on the floor all enhance the reflectivity of the light and give confidence when cleaning. The replastered walls and ceiling were painted with a bold clean satin blue from Farrow & Ball called “Chinese Blue”. This deep teal colour is a favourite of mine but was discontinued a few years ago in favour of new darker blues. But Farrow & Ball will mix any of their archive colours to order at no extra cost, so it’s worth keeping your old colour palettes. Although Farrow & Ball direct their acrylic estate eggshells as best for wood and metal I also use them on walls where I need a superbly durable finish such as here or kitchen splash backs. The door is painted in Farrow & Ball’s “Slipper Satin” oil-based eggshell (now discontinued).
"White" Staircase
A simple bright staircase becomes a gallery space in pure brilliant white and diffuse light provided by a vertically installed LED strip light. Not all Pure Brilliant White vinyl matt emulsions are the same. Dulux is a cooler tone with a slight sheen. Here I used Crown which has a slighter warmer tone and more matt finish while still being wipeable. The matt finish also makes it easy to invisibly touch up, which is necessary from time to time in a space that is vulnerable to knocks and finger prints, but needs to look clean and sharp. The skirting and other woodwork is painted with Farrow & Ball’s “All White” estate eggshell, which has a very similar warmth to the Crown emulsion. At its highest the ceiling is 18′ height above the stairs, which is huge for an interior, but was comfortably painted with an extendable ladder, which wedges firm into the treads. I also commissioned the oak bannisters from a timber yard, cut to the profile of the original soft wood bannister. The space was painted prior to the carpet being laid.
"White" Bedroom
"Teresa's Green" Bedroom
"Vintage Russian" Corridor
In 2004 I was fortunate to discover a large stash of 1950s Russian wallpapers in the St Petersburg flat of my brother-in-laws parents. They were happy for me to take them back to Britain. This pretty pink pattern was very delicate, the print was slightly dusty to touch and I did not have very much of it. The idea to paper the ceiling of this small windowless corridor put it somewhere away from potential damage and solved lots of design challenges too. The walls were needed for storage and the wallpaper would be wasted behind them. I built oak shelves and painted the walls pure brilliant white. By using crown-silvered light bulbs without shades on two pendant lights I cast the light back onto the ceiling, drawing the eye towards the paper and creating a warm pink reflected light across the corridor. Papering a ceiling is always challenging, though here I applied the lengths width ways. While this increased the number of joins it ensured greater control to ensure a good pattern alignment.
"India Yellow" Kitchen
I designed this kitchen using Ikea’s Årsta cabinets which have integrated recessed aluminium handles and satin white doors. This light neutral choice was complemented with an intense warm colour scheme by choosing Farrow & Ball’s “India Yellow” estate eggshell for the walls and trolley. It is very hard wearing, easy to clean splash back behind the work surface. The cork floor varnished and solid oak upstand both finished with Osmo Hard Wax oil continues the warm colour scheme but with natural materials. The cork provides a soft surface underfoot that is also surprisingly generous at saving plates and glasses from breaking – cork really deserves greater popularity. The ceiling is painted in Dulux’s Trade Diamond White Matt and the window with Farrow & Ball “Pitch Black” estate eggshell.
"Churlish Green" Corridor Floor
"Tate Cathedral" Loo
"Heat" Render
This image shows my redecoration of the exterior of my home in Totnes. It is a corner cottage in a conservation area but one half of the frontage on North Street is rendered in an an utilitarian manner with large picture windows. The previous owners had painted it all white which created a severe flat frontage above the garage and emphasised the clumsily placed windows. I chose to break up the wall with a two tone finish, echoing the two tone effect on the listed cottages on the other side of the street, but tonally flipped. On the lower half of our walls we used a pale “Chalk White” Sandtex smooth masonry paint, that is sympathetic to the natural tones in the adjacent historic stone part of the house. This portion of render extends over our neighbour’s garage so I also painted that too rather than pedantically break the visual effect at our boundary. With some trepidation we settled on a very bold burnt orange colour for the top half. This very warm colour, appropriately called “Heat’ balances the cool northern light and changes from golden orange to red during the day. The colour nods to the intense red soil of the local area, a reference several neighbours have commented on spontaneously. Dark oranges can be a difficult colour to paint with as the pigments needed are hard to produce with good opacity. I used Dulux Weathershield “Toasted Terracotta” smooth masonry paint as an undercoat (two of the images above show this undercoat partially covered with the first of the two top coats). This ensured a good intensity of colour and durability. Note in the image how the paler Dulux masonry paint has a sheen compared with the more attractive pure matt finish of Little Greene’s “Heat”. The windows were painted in Dulux Weathershield satin “Black” acrylic paint. The choice of black disguises the window’s uneven and distracting fenestration by having the effect of turning each window into a large rectangle by blending the glazing bars into the glass. The choice of a satin finish instead of more usual gloss helpfully disguises the imperfections in the timber windows – despite extensive preparation and repairs to the timber these old soft wood windows are reaching the end of their serviceable life and the decoration is eeking out a bit more use from them until budget permits their complete renewal.
Striped Alcoves
This picture of me and my brothers from 2003 shows one of two striped alcoves that I painted in our rented Borough Market flat. Intense matt emulsions were mixed in five different Dulux tester pots. They were painted in horizontal stripes, painting alternative stripes first, before masking over the previous stripes to paint the second batch. A fiddle, but well worth the effort. The colour scheme was inspired by the vintage lamp base, bought at Totnes market in the late 1990s.
"Volcanic" Vestibule
A hallway vestibule is not usually a place to put much effort into decorations. It’s so often a cluttered dumping ground and easily scuffed, that the effort to make it look nice can seem pointless. I disagree. Such an area is often quite visible and the first place a guest might encounter to hang up a coat or take off shoes. A bold decorative scheme can helpfully distract from the perpetual mess of the clutter that belongs there. A strong patterned wallpaper is one solution. Here I painted the wall a deep “Volcanic Splash” Dulux matt emulsion and then used masking tape at a diagonal to paint darker stripes over the top using a darker version of “Volcanic Splash” from the Dulux colour card.
"Peach" Passage
This is a very old photo from about 1992 when I was fifteen years old and just touching up the corridor ceiling in my parent’s home, the dilapidated Rectory in Holsworthy. My parents could never afford to turn on the oil-powered central heating so instead warmed the place up by choosing warm looking paint – here a fairly lurid shade of glossy mango for the doors and pale peach for the walls and ceiling. My mother particularly enjoyed selecting colours off the standard charts which would be specially mixed by Mr Tidbull at his DIY shop in the town square. She opened an account at the shop so I could get whatever I needed and the bill would be periodically settled up by the Church Commissioners from the diocese’s annual budget assigned to our house. It was a economically liberating approach to learning the trade.
"Arsenic" Loo
“Arsenic” is a crisp, clean colour from Farrow & Ball that zings visually like a freshly cleaned loo should smell. Here I have used the tough Estate Eggshell finish across the walls and ceiling of the room. It’s a dark colour, but it has a bright sheen to it that helps relfect the light. It also works because by choosing the pale Carerra marble tiles for the floor and skirting light is bounced up around the room from the single inset downlighter positioned over the toilet. The door is painted in Farrow & Ball’s “Elephant’s Breath” Estate Eggshell.