When I first got into the house, removing all the wallpaper, re-plastering, skimming and producing some nice clean white walls was a huge priority. I was just planning on getting the whole building to a white, blank canvas and then going from there – covering the place in colour.
Being a Primary School Teacher, I’m used to working in a brightly coloured environment. I love that it’s full of bright displays and children’s work – my classroom doesn’t have a boring bit of wall in it. It’s an awesome, happy, enthusiastic, naive, fun place to be – exactly the same sort of emotions I’d like to have in my home.
I love colour, especially bright, natural shades that reflect my love of the sea and the outdoors. I can’t get enough of blues and greens and had imagined every single wall in my house to be painted a different vibrant shade. To my surprise though, as each room turned paper white, I grew to love this spacious, airy feel. I liked the minimalism, the gallery style and knew my many prints, paintings and photographs would look brilliant framed and up on these walls; this is what I liked most about the blank walls, that they made my brightly coloured belongings and art really pop.
Colour upon colour can become hard to read and vague, whereas fun, bright colours and pastels placed on a white background really exaggerate their colour and draw your eye into them. As I experimented and placed different pieces of art and furniture in front of the walls, I loved the effect. You can see this in the photo above, some ivy I bought and placed in a brass plant pot which my Grandad made and gave to me. It’s easily the coolest plant pot in the world as it’s made from huge brass tubing, reclaimed from old telegraph machinery!
Despite my conversion to white walls, I couldn’t bear to have a totally blank house and came up with a design scheme that is very similar to Graham and Brown’s Popsicle trend. With rooms that were entirely white, I added very light, pastel coloured feature walls. I couldn’t resist painting the porch Cool Britannia. This colour is in fact a pretty light blue, and fairly inconspicuous, but given a white surrounding, it suddenly springs to life and appears bright and cheerful. I believe this will make a great entrance, framing the view into the white lounge and kitchen.
By giving your colourful things a white or pastel backdrop, you will notice their saturation appear to increase and the colour become more vibrant. Just check out my retro 60s coat rack which will go in the porch on the newly painted, pale blue walls. Having a light background definitely makes the awesome vintage colours stand out even more!
Loving the light colours, my team of painters and I continued, adding a very light (almost minty) green to one wall in the master bedroom. As with normal feature wall rules, I chose an interesting/important wall, going for the one which will have the headboard resting up against it. I thought this would make a feature of the bed and would look pretty cool.
A final great thing about using light pastel colours is that they are really relaxing and I hope will create a chilled, tranquil feel in my home. This is especially important in rooms like bedrooms where you want to get a good nights sleep – I could definitely do with one now after all this DIY!
