Design Decoded: The Househunter
My regular series in which we look at a house on the market to see what inspiration we can take for our own places and spaces.
For this week’s paid post we are off to north-west London, to a large, double-fronted house that is apparently in need of updating, although some of the work has already been started. It does, however, provide a lovely study of colours so I thought it would be worth a look; you can imagine your own furniture and personal details on top.
Below is the palette we are looking at, though you can see the blue hasn’t been picked up in the blocks. Now before you scroll past, thinking these aren’t your colours, remember you can slide up and down the spectrum to vary the tones and add a disrupting or contrasting shade to create something that might work better for you.
No doubt I am drawn to this scheme as it’s very similar to my own home. But imagine, if you will, the far left block represents the wood, the chocolate can be paint or metal, that neutral can be anything from cream to mushroom to pale pink, while the ox-blood (screamingly fashionable this year) can be lighter or darker, with more orange to become a terracotta or more blue to become burgundy.
Then you can add a chalky blue or deep green to bring it all alive. Even a mustardy yellow could work well.
That one on the left is very Mocha Mousse (Pantone’s Colour of the Year). Try Farrow & Ball Tanner’s Brown next to it, Little Greene Masquerade, and Paint & Paper Library Scarlet N Rust for the red.
The skill, of course, comes in how you put them together, and we can see this as we move around this house, which is on the market with Inigo.
The rest of this post is for paid subscribers and is one of three such posts you will receive each month if you upgrade. A subscription also give you access to my Design Clinic Live which takes place monthly on Zoom and is a chance for us to meet and for you to ask me about your decorating dilemmas. A monthly subscription costs £7, discounted to £75 annually.