Hello, and a warm welcome to the blog.

If you are navigating your way around decorating your home I am glad you have found this page.

I’m Ashley, an interior decorator.  I show people how to put themselves at the heart of their living space and decorate their homes in the best way for them. For me, the joy is in finding all the ways I can help people to achieve this –whether that’s painting and decorating, colour consulting, writing or talking.  I want as many people as possible to understand the benefits of using the power of colour to create great home decoration for themselves.

In January I experienced every painter & decorator’s worst nightmare. I fell over at home, broke my ankle, underwent surgery, and now find myself on an extended period of rest. So, while I catch up on my sitting down, I’ve decided to use this unexpected hiatus in as useful a way as possible – my hands still work after all!

I hope I can help you if you’ve hit a wall (I hope metaphorically) on choosing colours for your home, as you may be feeling frustrated. Maybe online inspiration has left you feeling confused – are we banning beige or bringing it back?  Why is one designer’s “best-ever green” another’s “avoid at all costs”.  By the time you’ve understood colour drenching, it’s all about double drenching my dear.

Or, perhaps you’ve spent a small fortune on tester pots and your chosen wall is sporting a line of paint samples but none of them feel right and the colour you were drawn to in the first place looks nothing like you thought it would and now it all feels an unfathomable mess.

Where can you go from here?  If you’re open to a fresh approach, there is a way to begin the process of choosing colours for your home that doesn’t involve tester pots.  It’s where I begin with all my clients. It starts with you.

Let’s just take a moment to consider that most mainstream paint companies use the colour wheel as a fundamental tool when creating colour schemes.  Isaac Newton’s famous diagram has been a key element of colour theory for centuries. It is a visual representation of the spectrum showing the scientific relationships between colours.  Now, what it doesn’t show (or can’t show) is the human relationship with colour. And it is that element which is the crucial starting point for any colour scheme. It’s your living space – why wouldn’t you want to be at the centre of it?

The critical question is, how do we feel about colour?  Or rather, how do you feel about colour?

Humans react to colour on a mostly unconscious level.  By tuning in and engaging consciously with colour, we can start to understand the effect it has on us.  Then it becomes so much easier to choose the right colours to decorate our homes and the spaces in which we occupy.

A good way to begin is with a question you may not have heard since childhood and that is what is your favourite colour?

Flick through a magazine, book or look at objects around your home and find physical evidence of a colour you love.  What’s important is to find the exact tone of colour that is a favourite one for you.  When you’ve found it, grab and pen and paper, and write down the exact name of the colour.  For example, if it’s green, what kind of green?  Mint, forest, grass, sage, bottle or lime green?  A blue might be a navy, teal, sky, baby or royal.

Ask yourself a few more questions about your relationship with the colour.  What is your first memory of this colour?  Does it remind you of a person, place or thing?  Does it hold any cultural significance in your life?  How does it make you feel?  Write down your answers.  It’s a seemingly simple question, but it can really help you to take note of the way that a colour can make you feel.

Then ask yourself the same questions about your least favourite colour.   If you struggled to think about a favourite colour, you may find this easier.  I knew my least favourite colour straight away as a particular shade of greeny-yellow,  but it took me a while to realise that it came from a childhood experience of biting into an unexpectedly overripe pear fruit.  (The association is particularly strong because it involves additional senses of taste, touch and smell).  A few years ago, a client told me of her hatred of mauve. As a young teenager, she was given (and made to wear by her mother) a wardrobe’s worth of hand-me-down clothes – you guessed it, all in various shades of mauve. It was a sensitive age, and her reaction was to kick back against the colour!

Now, your answers to these questions won’t give you an instant colour scheme, but you will start to bring your relationship with colour into meaningful consideration. From here you can explore further – and in my next post I’ll show you how to take that next step towards getting the right colours for your home.

Thank you for your company today.  If you’d like to see more of my work click here to go my Instagram page.  To contact me regarding consulting click here.

Until next time,

Ashley