Episode 7 - Paint Colours

In this episode, Kate and Jenny dive into how to choose the perfect paint colours for your home, whether premium brand paints are worth it, and how to create a cohesive colour palette. This episode is kindly sponsored by Irish paint brand Farrelly & Co - follow them on instagram @farrellyandco or head to their website farrellyandco.com

Paint colours mentioned:
- Misty Rose by Farrelly & Co.
- Drop Cloth, Shaded White, Schoolhouse White, Railings, Studio Green, Rangwali, and India Yellow by Farrow and Ball.
- Subtle, Arctic Blonde, and Wild Raspberry by Colourtrend.
- Caldwell Green by Benjamin Moore.

Follow us on Instagram - Jenny is @workerscottage and Kate is @victorianrathmines

Transcript

Paint Colours 8th Feb 2024

Jen: [00:00:00] You are listening to rip it up the renovations podcast. 

Kate: hi, I'm Kate. I run the Instagram page, Victorian 

Jen: Rathmines. And I'm Jenny. I run the Instagram account, Worker's Cottage.

Kate: This podcast is all about renovation and interiors from the renovator's perspective. We've been through it a few times between us and it hasn't scared us off. In fact 

Jen: we loved it so if you are planning to do up your own home you can expect to hear lots of advice from our own experience along with plenty of tips and inspiration.

Episode intro

this is episode seven, where we dive into how to choose the perfect paint colors for your home.

Episode body

Jen: Welcome back to the podcast. Hi, Kate. Hi, Jen. Today is one of the most frequently asked topics, I would say. Colors. Colors, paint. 

Kate: Yeah. What color should you paint your living room? Oh yeah. If I had a euro for every time someone asked me that. And it's 

Jen: so hard because like, it's such, it's the [00:01:00] most subjective thing.

There's approximately 24 billion different colors out there, all in different shades and tones and. It totally depends on where it goes in your 

Kate: room. It depends massively. It depends on your light, it depends on the daylight you get in that room, if you get light at all, if it's natural light, what colour, like going back to our lighting, what warmth is your lightbulb in that room, that can even affect it, but yeah, there's so many variables.

Yeah. So when someone says, I want to paint my house in off white, what should I paint it? I'm like, sorry, you really have to see the space in real life. Yeah, 

Jen: you have to, you do. So I think back to our two principles that we always talk about is number one. How are you going to use the space? And then number two, be true to the style of your own house.

So with colour, how are you going to use the space means, how do you want it to feel? What is that room being used for? Are you relaxing there a lot? do you need it to be bright and airy or cheerful? Do you want it to be dramatic and wake you up and make you feel, you know, ready to get after the day?

Or does it need to be really cosy and [00:02:00] relaxed and chilled? that all needs to be considered before you even think about what kind of colour. Yeah, definitely. 

Kate: And one room I think that divides people here is bedrooms. Some people love the idea of a fresh, bright, airy bedroom. Gets you kind of up and at them first thing in the morning.

And then some people love the idea of that dramatic, cosy bedroom. Yeah. Colors envelopes the whole room up to the ceiling, your bed linen is dark everything and people love that real kind of cozy space So even that's hard to pick, you know, it's so personal. It's such a personal choice 

Jen: Yeah, and then the second thing is to stay true to the kind of style or aspect It's probably the most important thing here of your house So if you're looking at a south facing room versus the north facing room, like what time of day The light gets into that room, physically changes the color, like the actual color on the wall.

It's different because it's all light at the end of the day. So if you have. An east facing room where the sun is coming up in the morning. That's typically a more bluey light, a brighter light. And in the evening time, if you're in a room where you get the west facing sun or Gold, that [00:03:00] golden hour.

It's golden. Yeah, exactly. That's really going to bring out all the yellows. If there's a yellow undertone or anything like that in your 

Kate: paint. And I think a lot of people are allergic to that yellowy cream we all saw in the 90s in Ireland. Magnolia paint everywhere. I mean, I think all of us can attest to some level of magnolia in our houses and maybe a yellow kitchen to boot.

Yeah. And so I think Irish people in general are A little bit allergic to those colors now. Yeah. And people really want to steer clear of them. Unless they're completely different kind of yellows. Like I'm looking at your cushions and your sofa. Yeah. And that kind of, more, you know, tumeric yellow or mustard.

But I think those faint hues of yellow in off whites is kind of not popular anymore. Because it just looks a bit dirty or 

Jen: something. Looks like dirty, yeah. There's something about yellow that's just a little, I love it. Yellow's actually my favorite color, so I hate to bash, magnolia, but it always just looks a bit dirty.

It's like, it looks like faded paint on the walls. Because back in the day, when the paints were oil based, more oil based, there's still a few out there, but usually it's water based now. The, the oil would go off colour. Yeah. [00:04:00] After a while, and it would look kind of yellowy, so that's what I feel kind of.

For sure, 

Kate: and our house at the moment that hasn't been repainted, used to probably be all glass white on all the woodwork, and that woodwork is. It's creamy yellow in parts where we haven't painted over it yet. It looks like you've been smoking it there for days. Yeah, yeah, it's like smoking twenty fags in your bedroom like a day.

Jen: Okay, so some shade of white is probably the most popular colour that people want or ask for because that's a perfect canvas for most of your house and then you can choose colours. I mean, do whatever you want, but that's more common, I would say. So, do you have any favorites that you 

Kate: go to?

Oh, I do. I have ones that I go to all the time and, I find they work well in Irish light. You know, they're not, I wouldn't say they're universal because if you have a load of south facing light it will show up a bit more undertones than somewhere that's not so bright, but. We'll come back to undertones, these are important.

I have a few favorites, and I've done this by learning or I've found my favorites by, you know, Hard taught lessons in my first renovation I did, and it's a lovely color, [00:05:00] don't get me wrong. I've seen it in other houses and I love it. It's the color trend, subtle. That's what I have. Yeah. And I do love it.

And I love that color. But my house, it looked really pinky purple. Oh, weird. Yeah, and I also picked a complimentary kind of deep. Charcoaly grey, I thought was complimentary, and off a swatch, and got my kitchen done in that, and it was aubergine. So my whole house was kind of pinky purple, and it wasn't intentional, and I don't hate pinky purple, but I just wasn't expecting it.

And it was just amazing, because on the swatch I love subtle. I've seen other people's houses, including yours, and I love subtle. And in my house, it just It was terrible. Yeah, 

Jen: I get the little pinky purple hue sometimes 

but like this is, such a ode to how important undertones are. Like undertones are basically every single paint in the world is a result of a mix of a lot of different colours. For sure. You might have a dominant colour that is, you know, green, for example.

But that green is going to be made of yellow and blue. We all remember primary school and how colours are made. So, is it more yellowy? [00:06:00] Is it more bluey? You know, there's the dominant color, there's the main color, you could call subtle just white or off white.

But the undertones in it are, there's kind of a brown in it, and I think the 

Kate: color cards can be really good at telling you this. So some paint color cards in some brands are set up that they're kind of in columns of swatches. Yeah. And if you follow kind of your off white down to the bottom of that column, it gets to what that undertone should be.

Yeah. So like. I'm talking about the, say, Farrow and Ball one here, when I look down, say, to the bottom one, it's London Clay, which is what I used to have in my old dining room, which is kind of a I loved that! chocolatey brown, but there's definitely a bit of purpley pink in that. So you can tell that the off whites on the top of that column You know, kind of have those undertones.

Yeah. And equally I had shaded white all over my last house. And I picked this color from Rebecca Wakefield. I love that interior designer. Yes. If you don't follow her, go follow her. She's amazing. But she does kind of semi traditional kind of houses in the UK. And all her paint choices were always just perfect for those spaces.

So I kind of copied her there and I did shaded white all over my house. [00:07:00] Yeah. Downstairs. Up hall stairs landing and some of the bedrooms I painted slightly different. 

Jen: I'm thinking of her shaded white. Was there a bit of green in that a little bit? 

Kate: Yeah, yeah, it definitely was there was definitely more of a green and I think I was so maybe traumatized by the amount of pink and purple That I probably went the other way and went with green instead But yeah, it was a bit more on the cooler kind of cooler tones And it showed up very different to my kitchen which had a lot of ether I would say and also my kitchen, because at the time the paint I chose didn't have a very good scrubbable paint.

I color matched it in a different brand. Yeah, and it was just never the same. It's never the same like I'm 

Jen: sure there's good color matching places out there I haven't come across 

Kate: them Yeah Like I found ones that can be a good match But they never look the same as those kind of premium brands on the wall And now I know that people listen to this saying I use Farron ballpaint It's terrible or I use this painting it was terrible and my painter won't use it.

They want you know X brand Fair enough. Everyone, you know, has their preference of what they like to [00:08:00] paint with. But there's kind of reasons I think some of these paints are very expensive. The paints are expensive because they've high pigment. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of pigment in them.

And that lasts. 

Jen: That's important because 

Kate: that really lasts. Exactly. It looks rich on the wall. It looks velvety on the wall because there's less binders used and things like that. So there's more pigment, less binders. You'll get that real rich color that'll last. But it's sometimes As a result, it can be kind of harder to paint with.

If you need it runnier, maybe. 

Jen: Or it might clog up nozzles if you're using a spray gun. Yeah, 

Kate: sprayers. Good, yeah. Great shout there. Yeah, I think it's worth it. If you really want that richness of colour, I think, 

Jen: sometimes. The other thing that's really important about going with a brand instead of a colour match is that in a few years time, you're going to have to repaint your wall.

And, you know, Probably gonna want to paint it the same color. Like I've got scuff marks on my walls and a few cracks showing through from the house settling after getting it renovated. so I know that I can just go to ColourTrend, buy Subtle, and it's going to be the same .

Okay, you know, I don't want to paint just a pat on a wall because it might look different after a few years of Fading and use and all that, but it's likely to be as close [00:09:00] as possible. Whereas if I go back to a colour match centre, It could be 

Kate: different. Oh, yeah, and I think even in the same center Getting color matched and you know batches of it made.

Batch to batch it can vary even in the same shop I think yeah, you know calibrations on the machine all that you can get slightly different results I got the same one color match twice I did a different area and it was definitely a slightly different finish Yeah Even though the percentage sheen was meant to be the same it just looks slightly different on the wall when I paint it beside it So you'd see the kind of line or the divider where I use the new paint.

So yeah, it's definitely a watch out. For me, if I can find the color I love in a particular brand, I will probably go for that brand. Yeah, I think it's worth it. For longevity, for richness of color, for the pigment, I just think it'll be it'll be a better result. Yeah. So yeah, but there's a million brands out there, right?

So there's a million brands to pick your color, so you'll probably find your color somewhere. Totally. 

Jen: One thing as well, I, I think we always talk about this is you can balance it budget wise, because if you're looking for a branded paint, some of them can be really expensive.

And if you've got a big house, I [00:10:00] totally understand. You're not going to want to blow a lot of your budget on paint, but choose the rooms where you do really care about the color. And then maybe. You know, your ceilings, for example, or if you're not fussed about your guest rooms or the outside of your house balance it out like you don't have to completely go.

Yeah, 

Kate: every single thing. Exactly. Yeah, you might want to really You know blow the budget on your entrance hall. Yeah, yeah but absolutely I Remember this paint I had in my old bedroom, and my husband rarely compliments the paint or, you know, comments on it too much, like he'd be like, yeah, that color's fine.

As long as I don't think anything too pinky, he's generally okay with it. He hated it for a second. Yeah, he's like, do you realize that kitchen is kind of purple? I was like, no, I didn't really, that was my mistake. But anyway our old bedroom was drop cloth by Farrow and Ball. Oh yeah. Kind of a shade deeper than that shaded white, but oh my god, the walls were like velvet.

Like it just, that room was just so calm and so soft. And he used to even say it all the time, I love the colour in this room, and he still says it. And he's like, when we're renovating [00:11:00] this house, can we paint our bedroom drop cloth again? Like it was just such a gorgeous colour for a bedroom. So rich and so velvety on the walls, but yeah, there's lots of, lots of different kind of brands, different kind of colors to suit.

But one thing I found more recently, well, from my purple kitchen as well Irish light. can, you know, show up paints a lot different than, you know, maybe where certain paint brands are designed for. So be careful with that. And sometimes going with the Irish brands of paint can work really well because they've been specifically designed to match that kind of bluey light or that gray kind of, you 

Jen: know.

I've color tried to do most of my house and I think it just, yeah, made here, it works for here. I think it. 

Kate: Yeah, and if you're a big fan of like those premium paints like Farrow Ball, then try you know Irish brands like Farrelly who do a similar kind of highly pigmented paint. So there's lots of brands.

Jen: Because I think that's why it shows up so lush that the draft cloth that you had is because there's so much pigment in it. Yeah, so much pigment. I keep coming back to this but it's really important. Yeah, it is. Pigment is expensive. Like that is what you're paying for. Yeah, that's 

Kate: exactly what you're paying for for sure.

Obviously you can color match, but like Jen said, you know, [00:12:00] consider that you might need to repaint some stage. 

Jen: The other thing I was thinking for, we were just talking about the swatches. I think they're a bloody waste of time. I can't tell a thing, from those swatches. They're so tiny. No. Because it looks so different and like, so you really, really, really need to see a, a big surface area in the room where the paint is going in.

Which might not always be possible. Maybe you're not able to, you know, paint over a lot of the wall for whatever reason. Like maybe you're going to be choosing for a long time and you don't want paint streaks all over your nice living room wall. But what I would do then is I would get a big sheet of white paper.

White, white paper. At least A3, A2 if you can get it. A0 even better. And buy a pot of paint samples. I know they're a fibre, they're expensive and you might go through a few of them. But it's worth it. Yeah. And. 

Kate: It's worth it than having a whole pink and purple house. Yeah. By accident. 

Jen: And paint that and then hang it on the wall.

And then check because it, it, you'd be surprised. And make sure you check it morning, evening. It's going to look different and just make sure it's what you want. The second thing I would say is, again, because I can't tell from those little tiny swatches, that was a brilliant [00:13:00] tip about, you know, look down the list of the swatch of the darkest colour.

If for whatever reason you don't have that swatch, or you don't have access to that swatch, another thing that's helpful is to pick. Some items that are a very strong primary color, so like a blue item, a red item, yellow and hold that up against the sample on it. You're able to see a bit more easily what undertones are in that sample of the off white.

So if you've got a small. It's a little piece of let's go back to shaded white, for example, if you held up a blue or yellow or green or whatever, you, you're able to see a little bit of like, okay, this one kind of goes a bit with the green. Yeah, it does calibrate your eye. Yeah. It takes a bit of practice, but it's just, it can be handy if you're stuck with swatches and 

Kate: you able to figure it out.

Yeah, because if you had 10 off white samples in your hand. Like, it starts to, it starts to become impossible. Yeah. I follow some Instagram accounts that were trying to decide they're off whites or whatever. And they had a million painted on the wall and doing polls. And, sure, you're looking at it through your phone.

Yeah. Like, what kind of poll through your phone? Like, I'm seeing it completely different than she is in real life. Totally. So, it's like, yeah, it's really hard to [00:14:00] judge unless you have something like that. 

Jen: That's important. Seeing it on screen is really, really difficult. I mean, use it to help narrow down your choices.

Yeah. But, you have to see 

it 

Kate: in real life. You really have to. So, I've seen really good. So paint pots are one, which are a little bit of a pain, but like Jen said, paint it on some paper and move it around. You can get the big swatches, you know, like on an A4 and some of them are even bigger now. Like there's A5 and A4 ones I think that I've seen in different brands.

And then there's some peel and stick samples, which are amazing. That's brilliant. You can actually stick it to the wall, move it between the rooms. And like you said, look at it morning, noon and night in each room. And even with your lighting, you know, that's going to change. Definitely consider the kind of warmth and light that you're going to have in that room as well.

Jen: How did you decide then? So you touched on the colour that you had in your previous dining room, which was beautiful. It was this really cosy, very elegant. Chocolatey, browny, oh my god it was fab. But that's a bold colour because your whole dining room was very dark then. 

Kate: I definitely [00:15:00] went, I'm probably not as brave with colour as you are.

Yeah, I do love colour. But you do it well, like you do it in pops of colour but like. They're slightly muted. I wouldn't say you have mad Julie tones all over your house. So they're still a bit more muted, right? 

Jen: That is, and that word tone is important. So when you're looking at colors, mine are a bit muted because they will all have a bit more black in them.

So really tone is just how much black is added to a color to make it, you know, lighter or darker. So, everything I chose, every sample I got, I was like, that looks a little bit too dark. But actually when it's in a big size and there's lots of light hitting it from your windows, whatever, it always ends up looking a bit brighter.

So that's one tip. I always think samples look darker than the actual final product. But I think it's worth, if you like that, you know, more muted y kind of look that's not too vibrant and too overwhelming, going for a slightly darker tone, I think. Really helps because you can still get loads of colour in that way, but it's just not too bright and kind of sore on the eyes.

Yeah, for sure. Depends on what you like. Everyone likes different things. That's 

Kate: what I liked. Yeah, but that dark there's a couple of reasons I [00:16:00] went for that dark dining room in my last house. So first of all, I kind of laid out the different colours I was going for. I was going for shaded white in all the common areas, living space, kitchen.

And then our bedroom drop cloth was a complimentary kind of shade deeper than that. And then, that middle dining room didn't really have any natural light. Like, there was an opening out to the kitchen, but there was no window in that room, because we had extended out where the window used to be. And our fireplace was an original fireplace and was black marble.

Yeah. So we were like, will we go shaded white all the way through? And we were like, but it's going to show up different, because there's no light in here, whatever. So I just thought, I really wanted this room to be kind of, very adult I guess. Yeah. So I just wanted to be cozy and somewhere we'd put our dining table and just like actually spend a few hours in there.

So I decided to just embrace the darkness. We had dark wood floors, we went, you know, dark on the walls, we had the black marble fireplace. So yeah I think I just decided to embrace the darkness and I was happy I did. I think I would do it again especially if I didn't have natural light. I loved it.

And I've actually done similar really dark rooms for clients.[00:17:00] Recently as well, like a kind of a dark greeny color and I love it. The more I see it in other people's houses, it's like, I'm like, wow, I really want to do that kind of dark room again. And the one thing I changed about that, I kept my woodwork classically white in that room and I couldn't, the room just didn't settle up me and about six months in, I painted the woodwork.

Colour drenched it. Yeah, I colour drenched it and I didn't go so far as the coving in the ceilings. But I think I would, 

Jen: if I did it again. Yeah, I think I would too. So colour drenching is where you literally paint everything. So not just the walls, but also the architraves, the back of the doors. And I'm 100 percent with you on this.

If you're gonna go for a really dark, dramatic colour, colour drench it. Don't hold back. , don't be, you know, like, feature walls were very popular for a while there. I'm like, no, forget the feature wall. Paint the whole thing. Like, if you're gonna go for a colour, really go for it, I 

Kate: think. Yep, yep. I did similar in our downstairs WC.

Do you remember 

Jen: when I loved it. The Divine 

Kate: savages wallpaper. So 

I'd 

Kate: off black on the walls and the wallpaper itself was kind of off black so it was a tiny little black WC. And I [00:18:00] just thought it was cool to go into from a kind of a bright kitchen as I think that's somewhere you can definitely afford to kind of go really dramatic.

If you're maybe not brave enough to do your whole dining room do your WC or something. Always 

Jen: go wild in your downstairs WC. Why wouldn't you? It's a tiny little room. It's fully enclosed. Just go for it. 

Kate: Oh yeah. Talk about downstairs, downstairs toilet. The whole, that's a whole episode there. Tell me about your paint color in your downstairs.

How did you land on 

Jen: that? My, I, so I've Subtle by color trend I really love it. Again, it's made for Ireland. It, it's got that slightly brown undertone, which I just love. Maybe it's just not designed for 

Kate: Galway because that's where I had it. Or maybe it is if you love that kind of purpley pink undertone.

Yeah. 

Jen: And also my main living room is facing west and a little bit south. So it's getting a lot of bright evening light, which I think is, yeah, the golden light probably offsets the pinky color a little bit, I think. I love it. I think it's, for me, I think it's a perfect off white because it's a little bit warm, but not overwhelming.

It's not dark. It's a, it's a more cheerful kind of warm. I also love Arctic blonde. I've seen that in a few hauls. Yeah, it's very popular. It's so nice [00:19:00] in Ireland. Yeah. 

Kate: kind of steer clear of it in traditional homes. Yeah. I definitely think it's more for a contemporary space. Yeah. I think in traditional homes, it kind of shows up.

It's a great white for ceilings and kind of woodwork if you want that slightly soft white but I think it's a little, it's a little bit too bright, almost white for kind of walls 

Jen: in traditional homes. Yeah. Maybe if you're in a darker room like an oar facing room or something like that. Yeah. It could be lovely in there.

Kate: It's really amazing though for contemporary 

Jen: spaces I think. Yeah. And then my other colours I have in my Spare room slash office. I have I have studio green. By Farrow and Ball, which I love. It's a really deep dark green. It kind of looks almost black sometimes. And actually forget what I said there about color drenching because I didn't color drench that room.

I only brought it halfway up that room because I work in there a lot. If it was, if it was a different usage I would probably be much braver at color drenching, but I work in there, you know, a few days a week. You need to feel a bit. I need a bit bright. Yeah, I need a bit of brightness in there. But I still wanted something dramatic and I love Because I use it as [00:20:00] a spare bedroom too, I love green, any kind of shade of green to be honest, in a bedroom I think it's the most calming, soothing colour, absolutely adore it.

So I brought it halfway up the walls on panelling, but I did paint the back of the door and I did paint the skirting and the architrave in that colour I have wallpaper on the top half. So, that's another maybe less dramatic way to bring in a really bold colour is to bring a part of the way up your walls I mean that effectively is colour blocking but colour blocking is another option so maybe you have a normal colour or you know regular kind of off white colour on your walls but maybe you do your skirting on your back of your door or in your architrave or your outline of your window or the back of an alcove or something like that in a different colour and it's That's pretty cool.

Kate: Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. Because a lot of places, especially for traditional kind of old homes like mine, people typically go with the classic white woodwork, white door frames. And then more recently people have been color drenching and doing it all the same. And then some people are going darker.

So the walls will be light and the wall, the woodwork will be dark and all the trim will be dark. And I saw [00:21:00] that a lot in the last maybe year or two. And where the walls might be something like subtle or something like whatever shade of white school as white something like that and then they would work really like that charcoal gray or whatever, you know, really deep contrast, which is cool contrast.

And then more recently I've seen ones that are almost the same. But the, the woodwork is just like a shade deeper. I like that. I really love it. It looks so sharp. It looks so crisp. So like 

Jen: one shade down in the palette or whatever if 

Kate: you're looking at the same thing. And it still looks real bright, you know, crisp, contemporary.

But it just gives that bit of depth rather than it being all the same.

Sponsorship start

Kate: This episode is kindly sponsored by Farrelly Co, a new premium Irish paint brand founded by husband and wife team Rachel and Alan. Inspired through their experience transforming and restoring homes across Ireland, their interior paint brand is richly pigmented, zero VOC and certified child safe. Their innovative peel and stick samples make choosing colors mess free.

To find out more, follow their Instagram at Farrelly Co or head to their website at farrellyandco. [00:22:00] com 

Sponsorship end

Kate: I love that. 

Jen: I absolutely love that. I think that's a really elegant look. And it looks like a lot of thought has gone into something like that. It's a bit different. It's not too dramatic. I 

Kate: think that colour drenching, especially in dark colours, but I think if you're talking about the beauty of white.

Say woodwork and white ceilings in a really dark space it can kind of cut the space off Yeah, so you can afford to do it Maybe if you've really high ceilings already, but if you don't I think that ceiling is gonna be coming down on your head Mm hmm, so you're better off then I think to go up in the ceiling and everything if you're gonna go dark I agree do 

Jen: everything do your radiator do the back of your doors?

Yeah, everything just I think go for it. I always say that, 

Kate: paint your radiator and people say can you paint your radiators? I'm like absolutely you can paint 

Jen: anything. I follow in the hands of people who paint their microwaves like you can paint anything Yeah, you can paint absolutely anything. Yeah other colour then that I have in my downstairs is, It's Wild Raspberry, also by ColourTrend, in my downstairs bathroom because that is a really vibrant, deep, very, very rich raspberry colour.

Where did that come from? Like how did you land on it? I saw a photo on the internet. Oh really? Yeah, of something similar [00:23:00] and I just went trawling through. to find out. I didn't want to colour match it. 

Kate: Did you have your raspberry wall colour picked first or your 

Jen: terrazzo? I had the terrazzo picked first.

You had the terrazzo picked first, so it had to be complimented. Yeah, it had to be complimented. Yeah, exactly. So the terrazzo has a bit of dark green in it. It has that kind of, a dark reddish kind of amber y colour which picks up on the raspberry very nicely and it has a kind of a yellow, mustardy colour.

So actually all the colours in the terrazzo are, I would say, picked up by my main colour is on my couch and my walls and everything, yeah. It's a great way to tie 

Kate: the place together. Yeah, yeah. You start to see those. It's like that, you might have seen, going around at the moment where they're saying put the single item of red in a room.

Oh, I really am into that at the moment. Yeah, I'm so into it as well. It's called the red theory. Yeah, the red theory. Yeah, that's it. I've seen loads of videos on it and I never kind of. I never noticed it, but then when I see loads of spaces, even if they were super contemporary, slick, you know, minimal spaces, and then this one pop of red, whether it's a red side table or in my case, I have a [00:24:00] red ish sofa, I suppose, I just think it really pops in the room.

Totally. And it's against the kind of all neutrals that we're so used to seeing at the moment, which I really like. I like that kind of commit to one item of red. I think it's 

Jen: class. Like it could be a lamp, it could be just a side table like you said, but something small that is red or like an adjacent shade to red.

Like it could be a really rich, you know, dark red. Burgundy. Yeah, burgundy or burnt orangey colour or something. Yeah, yeah, along that 

Kate: warm spectrum, yeah. It looks amazing. Even 

Jen: flowers, like you could get, you know, a bright bunch of like really vibrant red flowers. And I always feel that flowers and plants, if you want to bring in colour, are such a great way of doing it without committing.

to a color because they always look good anywhere. They always fade kind of into the background 

Kate: a little bit. Yeah, and you have a lot and so do I. It's dried flowers. 

Jen: Dried flowers. Shout out to The Crate if anyone 

Kate: is looking for them. I still have mine. I've had mine from The Crate for three years I'd say.

The ones behind you are three years old at least. They're still as vivid. You know, the gorgeous burnt oranges and reds. And they're perfect. [00:25:00] And then 

Jen: you don't have to buy plastic flowers. Yeah, yeah. They're just, they're amazing. I absolutely love them. They do beautiful bouquets. Yeah. 

Kate: Really, really like those.

But yeah, plants I agree with you. I have plants probably everywhere. I'm not very green fingered. Like, I, you know, kill a lot of plants. But I've gotten better. I've gotten better in the last few years. I've kept the ones I have alive. Even with two children trying to pull them down and kill them and dig out the soil all the time.

They're still alive. How? 

Jen: Your gardens are unreal. You have tulips and 

Kate: everything and your gardens are fab. That's, that's not really me now. I can't. Okay. I go out and do the jobs with my husband but like, I'm going to give him his kudos for the gardens. I just go along to whatever he says. 

Jen: I've won that Kentia Pam over in the corner in my living room that I've picked up and done the day before the cameras were coming for Home of the Year because I just needed something in that corner.

It's the only thing I've managed to keep alive. I just throw a cup of water into it every now and then and it seems 

Kate: to like that. I think a drop of that baby bio feed, like once every two months or something. A drop or two of that into the water and it's perfect. Perfect. Yeah. What you said actually about plants inside and plants [00:26:00] outside.

And one thing I did in my old house. So I have that kind of curly terracotta brick coloured sofa. Yeah, I love that. Which my kind of initial intention was to match kind of the brick and the red brick houses that you saw at the window of the living room. But actually we planted an Acer tree in the middle of our front garden.

So it's a Japanese Acer plant. So it's like a five kind of. I don't know, fingered kind of leaf plant. Okay. You've probably seen them a lot. So it's green, like all leafy green. It's green, but it changes colour through the seasons. Oh! And the stems go really vivid red. Oh, I know the one you're talking about!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like it changes colour dramatically from kind of summer to autumn to winter and stuff. And even winter when it loses its leaves, you still have these bright red stalks. Yeah. So it's a really nice way of like tying outside to inside as well. And even that makes it kind of cohesive.

Yeah, great idea. When you start pulling in those kind of colours. So that's definitely something to consider. What's out in your garden? Can you pull some of that? Maybe you might have a pot of like really vivid red flowers or something like that out there. Yeah 

Jen: One thing I heard about [00:27:00] color and I always do it it got stuck in my head and it wasn't to do with interiors actually to do it with dressing yourself Making sure outfit goes was if you're gonna introduce a color introduce it three times.

So if you're gonna have You know, I have my mustard couch, for example, but then I also have the mustard footstool and then I also have the same colour mustard cushions over in my dining area. Okay, it's like repeated. It's balance, it's all balance. It's such an important theme, I think, in design in general, but in interior design, if you have it, if you have that colour balanced out somewhere 

Kate: else.

Okay, and if you start to, I'd say, recognise that pattern as you go through someone's house, you mightn't see, oh, look, she's got that You know, mustardy yellow three times in her house, but your eye and your, you know, you start to feel like the space is cohesive. 

Jen: Yeah, completely. It just, it feels more natural or something to the human eye.

I have, obviously the navy in my kitchen, there's a similar navy in my dining area, and then above my couch, I have three prints that are a very very Similar navy as well. I just, it always stuck in my head to, if there's [00:28:00] a bright color being introduced. I think just that. Either color drenched or repeated 

Kate: three times.

And I think that kind of, Cohesiveness through the rooms and through the areas in your house is really important. So like, don't just go absolutely wild in a bedroom that it doesn't go with anything. Yeah, you can go deeper shade or whatever. Do it in your downstairs 

Jen: WC. Yeah, even 

Kate: your downstairs WC, like.

See that it's at least it's somewhat kind of complementary that they don't scream at each other like it like it like it looks at A place 

Jen: yeah, and the way to do that is samples of everything every time you're going shopping I have a bag of samples of the fabric of my sofa the fabric colors of my wall I would just have a bag of them and a measuring tape and I bring that everywhere with me one really easy 

Kate: way if you Don't have a lot of software you might have PowerPoint or whatever or Canva or whatever, but I find it really good to just screenshot some of the swatches online.

Now I know that's not going to be true to what it looks like in your house, but the visual representations of all the paint colors you're looking at, screenshot them, crop them and then put them all on one slide together. Totally. And just like. Just see what they sit like together and even drop in [00:29:00] a screenshot of some of the furniture you're thinking of or whatever and you'll start to see very quickly, you'll build up your own little style boards, you know, or mood boards really quickly even if you have your floor, throw it in even better, you know, like a screenshot of your flooring, but just to see them all in one space together, I just kind of, I suppose goes over them and tells you what's not sitting right.

Like you 

Jen: have to see it. There's no other way of doing it. Like you always have to see those things. I think PowerPoint, I use PowerPoint. All the time and I know there's loads of brilliant tools out there and I use those too, but PowerPoint is just handy because everyone has it. Like all you have to do is import a photo onto a slide and as many as you want and you can just lay them out together.

It's brilliant for mood boards if you're Crafting everything, 

Kate: remove backgrounds and stuff like that. Yeah, it's really good. It's got that too, it's brilliant. Do you know what I use? Canva, Canva's unreal. Canva's brilliant but do you know what's even good? Instagram stories. Yeah, yeah. Like pretend you're going to put up a story and then you can add all your photos as other ones and you can rearrange them, you can turn them, you can scale them.

You can crop them, whatever, like, so that's a really handy tool. And you can download 

Jen: it, so you don't have to post it as a story. No one else is going to see it. But you can, if you go to the dots on the right hand [00:30:00] side, you can press download. And it will save it as a photo to your camera. Because that's really handy.

Like, you want that photo 

Kate: handy. If you ever see, like, random pictures of colour swatches on my page, it's probably because I did post by accident. Rather than just download it. There's 

Jen: another really great website called Coolers. C O O L E R S and that's brilliant at generating a palette for you. So say if you have one or two colours that you know you love and you really want to go with it and you're not sure what else you should use as accent colours or, you know, other complementary colours, you can upload them there.

You can type in the code, you know, the hex code or whatever else you have. Or you can take a photo and colour match it, like eyedrop it and it will suggest a colour palette for you which is really handy. That's very handy. Or I always find, go on the websites of the paint companies because usually when you pick a colour they will advise you.

I think it will show up at the bottom like, Yeah. These are the 

Kate: colours, complementary colours. Yeah. Definitely. A lot of them do that. One thing I would. I should, you know, use a bit of caution or employ a bit of caution as the generated kind of images of rooms on paint colors outside to say like, this is what it'll [00:31:00] look like in this paint kitchen.

It will not look like that. It won't look like that. Like it won't look like that. And there's some kind of software that you can kind of put it in your own room and you can pick a wall. Don't trust that. Like, it's not gonna be the same light as your room. It's not gonna look the same. So, swatches, swatches, swatches.

Stick them on the wall. Paint squares of paper or whatever you can do, but don't trust computer generated only for paint colours. No, 

Jen: it's not accurate. It just isn't. And it, like, you can tell it's not accurate because if you look at it on your phone and then on your laptop or whatever else you have, or a friend's phone or somebody else's phone, you, they will look different.

It just does. 

Kate: It's just the nature. What do you think, I think we're seeing it a lot now in this kind of neutrals. Trend that's going around there'd be various versions of the same color, right? So at the moment it might be beiges and browns and whatever and it's very layered and textured But you can do that with other colors as well.

Like I 

Jen: love that Look, so you call that monochromatic because it is the same color but lots and it's a different different tones Yeah, different tones or they have slightly different undertones. I bloody love it. I think it looks class and I saw it [00:32:00] a lot I was at Maison et Objet in September, which is a big kind of interior design trade show.

And I saw it in a few different places. One of the favorite rooms I saw it in was they had just gone. all green for the entire room. There was a green chandelier, there was a green table, there was a green rug on the floor, there was a green paint on the wall, there was a green couch, everything was green.

Green is a safe kind of colour to do it with because it's not an overwhelming colour. Our minds just tend to put green in the background maybe because of nature. But I loved it, I thought it was 

Kate: so cool. That's cool, yeah. And it's real rich, isn't it? It just fills the space. And I think you can be really smart.

choice for small spaces as well. Because your eye can't tell where one thing stops and one thing kind of starts a little bit. It 

Jen: gives a lot of depth to a room, a lot of depth because it's layers and layers of the same thing. It's kind of looking at a, you know, an image of a horizon that goes on forever.

It's just layers of slightly different colors. I think it looks class. 

Kate: What do you think? Yeah, I do know. I really like it. And I kind of think that like, I do it inadvertently, I suppose, in that like [00:33:00] trying to pick complementary shades of the same color. Yeah. Or like different deeper shades of the same color in the same room.

I'd say your, 

Jen: your, your dining room had it. Because it had lots of shades of that dark, kind 

Kate: of. It did, yeah. The dark marble that, the dark floors. Yeah, they were all dark until, you know, when I did the woodwork. Eventually, it all went together. 

Jen: That, so there's a few terms that are good to know, because like how you pick what color goes with what is important.

That is monochromatic, like lots of different types of shades of the same colour.

Then, I use this all the time and it's so old fashioned. But the colour wheel, just Google colour wheel, you'll find it anywhere. It's so handy, especially if you have some idea of a colour that you know you love that you're drawn to, which you can tell by looking in your wardrobe or just putting together a mood board of things that you like.

And using the color wheel is really helpful to help you match or marry different colors to come together to achieve the effect that you want. So if you want to really you know, calm, cohesive house, you can just [00:34:00] get complementary colors. They're on opposite sides of the color wheel and that's perfect for an accent.

If you're a little bit braver, you can go triadic, which is basically if you just drew a triangle kind of on the color wheel and pick the three points. If you're really brave and you want like a wild pop, you can pick ones that aren't complementary at all, but you just need to put them beside each other and see how they go.

Kate: What do you, how do you do it? Sorry, the triadic, you're just saying it's equidistant on the color wheel? Yeah, so 

Jen: if you drew, 

If you were looking at the color wheel and you just basically 

draw an equilateral triangle on it.

Jen: at the three points are three Complimentary colors, which you know will go well together and you can choose different shades and tones, etc of those but that they're always a safe bet, you know, they're going to go 

Kate: actually slightly off topic, but not really.

It's still about pink colors is the pops of color kind of idea that, you know, in your WC and whatever, but also your pantry we talked about. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of an unexpected pop of color. Yeah. So like your WC can be an unexpected pop of color when you open the door and it's totally different than the rest of the room, but you have a pink pantry inside and a navy.

Jen: I've [00:35:00] pocket doors in my pantry so when I open the doors they slide back into . And then the most of my kitchen is painted navy. It's railings by Farrow and Ball. And then the inside of that is, is a nice mustardy colour, same as my couch. 

Kate: It's a great way of kind of not committing 

Jen: maybe.

Yeah, and I do, because I keep saying I don't love an accent wall but actually I'm sitting here looking out at my garden and I technically have one because my garden wall is a very bright colour and you could kind of consider that an accent 

Kate: wall. What colour is it? The pink, is the color match? Don't know, 

Jen: I just got a color match, yeah.

For an outdoor paint, I kind of wasn't as fussed about getting a good quality as the indoor. The 

Kate: reason I ask, I remember when I was growing up, I used to paint my room every couple of months, like, that would be out, I'd save my pocket money and paint my room. But Dulux used to have this range in the 90s called MySpace.

I don't know if you ever remember it. So it was all like, kids paint colors. And like, my bedroom at one stage was indigo and that hot pink. Yeah. I can't remember. I can't remember, I had like three walls pink and one wall indigo or vice versa. But like, I'd say you'd see my bedroom from space, like you could definitely see it from the road 

Jen: anyway.

It reminds me, what were those roller skates you [00:36:00] used to get? It was like pink and purple roller skates. I don't know why 

Kate: they always stood out in my memory. But like, that pink really rhymes in my old bedroom. Yeah. 9. It's, 

Jen: do you know what, there's one in

the Farrow and Ball range 

Jen: I 

love called Rangwali. . 

Jen: And I wanted something similar to that but a bit brighter, so I think that might have been my reference.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's 

Kate: gorgeous, yeah. 

Jen: Any last advice if you want a stronger color? So we've gone through the off whites, let's say, but say if you want to go with a brighter color or a stronger color Or you're picking, you know a main Bright color for your sofa. It doesn't have to necessarily be paint, but something else.

Do you have any advice for how to decide what to go for? So both of us painted our kitchens a pretty strong color. Yours was a green, Caldwell green, I think was it? Yeah, 

Kate: Benjamin Moore. Yeah, Benjamin Moore has some beautiful colors as well. Yeah, really nice paint. How do you 

Jen: decide like which bright color to use?

God, I don't 

Kate: know actually. How did I land on that? I suppose it has to be complementary to the paint colors that I'm expecting. It's, you know, I'm going for on the walls, but I really try and draw from kind of what I'm seeing outside those windows as well 

Jen: [00:37:00] in the room. Yeah. That's a good one actually. Make 

Kate: sure it goes.

I would say I definitely have a tendency more toward kind of earthy colors or slightly muted or faded out colors. Like you said, the it's a black and it's to bring it a bit deeper, maybe I'm not as vivid. I kind of steer away from kind of jewelly bright colors. They're just not, I don't know, maybe they just, for me.

So that's probably where I started, probably kind of started drawing from the outside. Like we said before, I think in the furniture episode, my sofa was like number one. I picked the sofa 

Jen: first. Yeah. Same, same. Everything in my house was designed around that yellow sofa. Cause I 

Kate: picked the sofa. Then I picked the wall color that was kind of complimentary and then it kind of snowballed I suppose.

I tried to go from room to room to room that it kept kind of running into each other and was cohesive that way I would say. And the green we picked was just. A little bit about pop, but it was still along those kind of earthy green colours, and earthy colours in the rest of the house. And if you remember my kitchen, so I had the green and the main units, but the far wall was also a patterned wall of units, or kind of hidden units.

And that was the same colour as the [00:38:00] walls. Yeah, I loved that. So it had to be kind of complimentary, you know. So yeah, I'd say that's probably how I did 

Jen: it. I think there's really good advice there, because we both picked a colour first. So you had your sofa picked in a certain colour, I had mine picked in a certain colour.

I always wanted a yellow couch. I love it. And then, I think the key piece of advice is to work towards that. Like, keep that being your focal point. Because picking a focal point in every room is a great place to start for design anyway. And the same is true for colours. And everything you're picking after that should be in some way You know, complimentary or should in some way go.

Kate: I think that's really good. Yeah, and you mentioned the pink color as well. Rangwali or whatever. There was also another one I saw and it went kind of viral on the Irish brand I was mentioning a while ago, Farrelly Co. So they put up this kind of pink a while back it's Misty Rose. But it's this gorgeous, if you like that kind of earthy pink.

And it was actually kind of like what I had my hall door in a few years ago in my last house. But if you kind of want that kind of pink but [00:39:00] not maybe as vivid, I just think those dusty pinks are gorgeous. 

Jen: I think even your husband would be okay with that pink. It's such a muted pink. I got away with it on the hall door.

Yeah. 

Kate: The hall door was yellow. And that was like my first thing to paint. Yeah. But yeah, those dusty pinks I think can be really nice as well. 

Jen: Yeah. My last question. How do you feel about painting your ceiling? 

Kate: As in the same colour as the walls. Yeah, all for it. I'm kind of on the school of thought now, it shouldn't be white, white anymore, at least it should be a soft white and I think we did pretty much kind of real white or all brilliant white in our last house.

Well we did, actually did Fairhorn Ball all white, which is slightly soft but it's still very white. I think I'd go a bit deeper. Yeah. Closer to the walls so there isn't such a contrast because we were saying what I was saying before is That line between your ceiling and your walls then is very stark if you go for any kind of depth on your walls.

It's a little different in older houses where you're cornicing and stuff like that because then you commit to painting the cornicing. 

Jen: Yeah and it's nice to have, well I like both, I've seen it done both ways where the cornicing is painted the same color or it's a real standout, you know you [00:40:00] can use it to contrast which is really cool too.

I like both. 

Kate: The one thing on the cornicing is It depends on the house. Some cornicing is so detailed that trying to get a paint into all those little nooks is serious effort. And if you go dark in your walls and you paint all that cornicing, you ain't never gonna paint that light again. Some cornicing is 

Jen: so delicate you might not want to layer it either.

You might want to just leave it as it 

Kate: is. Yeah, and I feel like plasterwork is something you shouldn't touch too much. So that's where I kind of draw the line a little bit. I'm like, Oh, I don't really want to paint the cornicing. It's a light lick of kind of whatever the light white or off white is, but committing to a dark on the cornice thing, I'm, I don't know.

Jen: It's a bold move, yeah. I think again, be guided by the house and what the house is. For sure. Yeah, yeah. Okay, one final thing to finish off on. So at the start of the episode we were talking about how do you use the room, what do you want to be used for and how do you Let that kind of guide your color decision making.

And that's really important because different colors will elicit different kind of moods or make you feel a certain way. It's a really, really, I think it's very powerful. [00:41:00] Like the colors you're surrounded by I think they definitely have an impact on your mood and the atmosphere is maybe a better word.

Kate: I always find like a gym never has a calming misty mood. No, it shouldn't. 

Jen: I remember my school used to have all these primary colors on all the plates and it, you know, it's supposed to be stimulating and all that. But whatever about mood, certainly atmosphere, it definitely impacts the atmosphere. So I think it's Like your dining room was such a good example of that, like that, you wanted that to be used primarily in the evenings, you know, sitting around with some candles maybe going and the fire on and glass of wine and you know, you and the family or you and your friends and that's what it's supposed to support is that type of activity.

So that dark, cozy, elegant color, I think really works there. So it's like what, you know, what do you want to achieve in that room? Like how, and colours will, 

Kate: will do that. But do you think like, A bedroom then should always be cosy, dark. 

Jen: No, because I think it's so different to everyone.

Like, I think what colours will make me feel a certain way will do something different for you. So I think it's for everyone to choose, how they want to use that space, how they want to feel in that [00:42:00] space, and then for them to decide what colours will do that. Okay, typically like a really bright color would probably be more stimulating, but 

Kate: it's different for you.

a luminous yellow wall opposite where you sleep. I mean, do what you want to do. Like, that's up to 

Jen: you. You're someone who bounces out of bed at 6 in the morning, you might want 

Kate: luminous. More like my pink and blue bedroom when I was a kid. Probably not what you want for a bedroom. Did you have more energy when you were a kid?

Yeah, 

Jen: no. I don't know if it's that universal, I don't know that much about color theory, but it's for you to decide like how you feel and what colors do to you and how they make 

Kate: you. Yeah, I said recently I was staying in a hotel the bedrooms were this lovely dusty blue. Oh yeah. It's never something I would have considered for a bedroom actually.

Never at all. But I loved it. It was just, the bedroom was so calm. I know as a little mini holiday or whatever, staying in a hotel, but still it just felt like it felt clean. It felt fresh, but it also felt really calming and relaxing. So it's definitely something. Yeah. 

Jen: Blues and greens typically are more.

And [00:43:00] I 

Kate: think especially be careful in Ireland with your grays and off whites that sometimes very cool lighting as well as a grey wall can just Just zap the energy and light out of a room. 

Jen: We've too much grey in our sky. We've too much.

Kate: Just too much grey. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unless you've a very minimal kind of architecturally designed home that you want that very cool look like. When we were talking in our lighting episode and about having lots of spots and bright lights and cool lights But yeah, I think I think steer clear of too much gray.

I think in Ireland with our climate. Agreed. So I think that's everything for painting colors I think 

Jen: we could do a bunch of different episodes on colors. We could go into specific rooms, specific colors So I'd love to hear from you listeners if you have any questions off the back of that or if you have any suggestions or you can just send us some cool photos of Paint 

Kate: colors we love, yeah, and we'll feature them.

Because I think I think, you know, paint is an absolute minefield. Like, like you said, how many colors are there? 14 billion. Yeah, there's [00:44:00] enough colors. And there's so many brands and so many versions of similar colors that, like, it's hard to pick. And it's hard to pick the right one first time. Yeah, agreed.

So I think as much expert opinion we can get here, the better. Agreed. 

Jen: So that has been episode seven and we'll see you in two weeks time for episode eight. Yeah. 

Kate: Thanks for listening. See you soon. Bye.

Outro

 If you found that episode useful, please do us a huge favor by giving us a like, and a few stars and especially click that subscribe button. Thank you.