The Paint and Paper Library

Colour is all around us, in everything we see. It influences how we see things, and how we feel about things. 

The colours we choose for our homes set the scene for how we use and enjoy our spaces. 

How colours work in the home
When you first start to think about painting, you need to think about how the space is used, and what sort of feel you want it to have. 

Ask yourself: 
Is it formal or casual?
Is it big or small?
How high is the ceiling?
What kind of floor covering does it have?
Does it have features you want to look at, or things you’d rather not notice?
How much light comes in?
What colour and style is the furniture?
What can you see out the window?
Do you use it mostly at night or during the day? 
Is this where you watch TV, sleep, or eat?
Is this where you entertain friends or your boss and his wife?
Does it need to serve many purposes?
Is it mostly used by kids, teenagers or adults?
Does it open into other rooms with different uses?
Does it feel cold and empty?
Does it get too hot in the summer?
Luckily, or maybe not, there is no one right answer, in the end it comes down to what you like, and getting the whole family to agree can be tough. 

(If it all seems a bit daunting, our experienced colour consultants are here to help!) 

Light
The amount of light that your room gets will really determine how the colour ends up, whether its natural light entering through windows, doors and skylights, or light fittings in the room itself. 

You’ve probably noticed already that colours look different at night to how they do during the day. And most types of light globes have some kind of colour cast, with yellow and blue being the most common. This is why we recommend you take our painted boards home to try them under all the kinds of light you will have. 

You can use light to create effects too, like using washes of light to highlight a particular wall or a fireplace. 

Ceiling, Walls and Floor
Surfaces on different angles catch the light differently, changing how the same colour looks. 

Generally speaking: 
Ceilings tend to look slightly darker than walls, as it depends on refracted light.
The wall containing a window will look darker, while the wall opposite will look lighter.
The floor will be the lightest surface.
So if you want your ceiling and walls to look the same, you need to paint the ceiling at least half strength of the wall colour. 

Sheen Levels
There are several different sheen levels available in paint – flat, matt, low sheen, satin, semi-gloss, high gloss. (See the About Paints section) 

The more glossy the paint is, the lighter the colour looks. So the semi-gloss on your woodwork actually needs to be darker to look the same as the colour on the walls. 

Feature Walls
Just saying the words ‘Feature Wall’ is enough to send some people screaming into the night! There was a time not to long ago when things had gotten a little out of hand, when every room in the house had to have a feature. 

Like lots of things, feature walls go in and out of fashion. They are definitely one area where ‘less is more’, but a well-considered accent colour can work wonders. The trick is to find a balance – enough contrast that it does stand out, but not so much that it overwhelms everything else, in a tone that enhances rather than matches the items in the space. 

And it doesn’t have to be a whole wall. It might be an alcove, a bulkhead, a wall with a window in it, or a chimney. 

Textured paints and wallpaper can also create fabulous features. 

Behind the Colour Wheel
There are an almost infinite number of colours, and so many possibilities in each one. 

Colour has always been about the familiar Colour Wheel, you know, red, orange and yellow on the warm side, and green, blue and purple on the cool. 

It’s based on lots of scientific stuff about the visible spectrum, how light works, chroma, hue, and intensity. 

But the Colour Wheel can’t take into account how colours make you feel! 

So we’ve taken the wheel apart and kept the principles but put it back together a different way. We’re throwing out the boring stuff you’ve heard about monochromatic schemes, triadic schemes and percentages. 

We’re talking about balance and harmony, and creating environments for you to live in that are warm, welcoming, calming, revitalising, stimulating, .