The art and heart of colouring in a home.
What is it that makes us itch to get a paint brush in hand? Ordering paint samples before we have moved in our books, pets and armchairs. Creating folders and scrap books of what it will feel and look like, as we wait for the interminable legal process to make it ours – all ours.
I think it is a guttural need to mark make and project every hopeful wonderful lives-well-lived, inside those floor plans. I am still waiting for now the home where Smoked Green-Blue will be the sitting room leading onto my walled garden. This may never happen, but I hold the colour in reserve, in case it does. There are also Siamese cats, a proper wooden greenhouse and a stainless steel Bulthap kitchen all wrapped up in the same future life….
Choosing colour says who we are – and perhaps who we hope to be.
When we bought this cottage in Lewes, we thought about what it would be like to live there, who would like to live there and what life they would probably live. The house also exerted its feelings ‘quite’ strongly. You will ask which way the rooms face – East/West - but most of these ‘rules’ of which colour group suits which room were well and truly broken. The house and I were in firm agreement that we wanted cosy, soft, unusual colours – and lots of them.
Stilling painted stairs with Paper & String walls in the stairwell were very happy together and Sadhika windows in the breakfast room made breakfast, drinks and snacks joyful.
The room which song most fervently is the sitting room – Plume walls, a Fallen Plum ceiling and Aged Black windows. The builders on site were sceptical but I’m happy to say they were won over. It really was the most beautiful room to be in. A fire, Italian Vogue and something dry and cold to drink made for a magical experience.
And we should never forget that our homes are meant to be magical for us.
A tiny bedroom completely immersed in Tirzah brings the deepest sleep and needs nothing other than a small ancient bed and an indigo dyed quilt. Cotta wanders through the hallways and bathroom. And Solstice is luminous in the lower ground floor kitchen and the master bedroom in the apex of the house. In theory this shouldn’t work – but it did - utterly.
I hope that this little house in Lewes shows you that choosing colour to tell your story of home should be a joyous exploration of how you want to live. And there really are no rules – just imagination.
And that a house can be your cradle if you let it.
Cassandra x