We create natural, breathable, bio-based colour and paint to help you tell your story of home and place.
Atelier Ellis treasures home in its truest sense - as a container for everything. An almanac of our homes as the holder of our possessions, experiences, palettes, people and place.
We want your home to be an uplifting container for the life, stories and memories that happen there. Our intensely pigmented, en terré colours are designed to envelop you and create spaces that are welcoming, calming and cocooning.
We craft our colours like an artist, using up to 10 pigments to create our perfectly complex, unique and nuanced shades. Every colour is both familiar and comforting, imagined from timeless human, nature and art-based ideas.
We hope they will inspire you to create the perfect backdrop for the way you wish to live.
A gentle and simple evolution -natural, breathable, bio-based paint
We’ve elevated our beautiful True Matt Emulsion and Steadfast Matt Emulsion to a bio–based formula.
This evolution of our natural paint base includes a newly developed, beautiful, natural based binder – which is also new to the UK. We’ve formulated it to be better for people and their homes.
Our new, renewable, natural-based binder is created from bio-based materials including vegetable oil produced from waste, castor oil, linseed oil, sugar and bio ethanol. It improves both the materiality and performance of our already exceptional quality, virtually VOC free and fully breathable paint.
We also offer complete transparency of our ingredients and source locations. We source over 95 % of our materials from the UK, with the remainder coming from Europe.
With a unique colour palette created by Cassandra Ellis, our bio-based paints are exceptionally matt and clean smelling and safe for all homes and places.
A boy on his bike
A boy – 13 or so, cycling to school. Arms folded, rucksack flung, damp combed hair and an easy smile. Sitting in traffic I watched him roll through, completely confident in his mode and with flair to spare
I wondered how long it took him to be gliding instead of wobbling. For the smile to slide in. The bouncing rucksack was slightly concerning but a bit of devil may care keeps our attention focused.
I was driving to a client’s house – a long drive – and like all of us I was listening to a podcast, trying to learn something, think something, feel something. Instead, a boy cycling with his hands free, insouciant, reminded me of home.
What does freewheeling have to do with choosing colours? A lot. To be confident in how you choose to live and decorate is something most of us think about. Some of us are obsessed, some just want a simple container to flex other skills or needs. At most we want to decorate with confidence, at best we want to be comfortable and safe at home. A Fallen Plum library, a Pollen nursery for our baby, a completely white space to start again.
I was in my client’s house for a long time. A lot to look at and think through, but still the same question, whether a large or small space. What will make them feel good, what colours will slide confidence into the life they choose. What hues will slip in the smiles?
I never mastered cycling without hands, but I can make colours and good paint – and I can help people tell their story. Sometimes this is just me, sometimes it’s through the magic of our hand painted paint chart. Very often it is through the Maps of Colour that I created. Instead of suffering a wobbly start, I made the maps so you know where to begin (hands on handles) and know when to riff (hands off). It brings me great joy to hear of your colouring-in adventures.
You can download the maps from our website. Then start either with a colour you are obsessed with or a neutral family to hold it all together. Get confident, then play. Literally hours of fun.
Look mum, no hands!
Cassandra x
Maps of Colour
Somewhere in that gathering of ‘things’ will be you, your home and the colours you want to live with.
For every colour in our natural paint collection, we have arranged a family of eight that we know will work together beautifully. Two whites, two neutrals, two mid-tones, a deep and a surprise. You may want to use all of them or just two, but knowing that this colour leads to that colour, should lead you down a more creatively fulfilling pathway.
Like a beautiful map of colour it also means you are at the centre of it all – which is the best path we can each take.
