Episode 7 - A Life in Colour - With Dulux Creative Director Marianne Shillingford

Susan welcomes Marianne Shillingford, the Creative Director of Akzo Nobel (Dulux Paints), and they talk about the immense impact of colour in design, explore how colour can evoke emotions and the influence of nature on colour palettes.  Marianne shares insights into Dulux's marvellous online tools and resources for consumers, the significance of Colour Stories, where Colour of The Year 'True Joy'shows up in 3 different scheme ideas that you can roll out for guaranteed success.  Did you know there was a Migraine friendly palette, or that healthcare and education settings have their own special hues and tones.  The discussion also touches on sustainability in paint production and the psychology of colour in various spaces. We highlight Marianne's wonderful work championing the Colour in Design Awards that support emerging creatives, celebrating colour.

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Takeaways

Colour is a powerful tool in interior design.
Nature serves as an excellent guide for colour palettes.
Current trends reflect a desire for comfort and familiarity.
Light significantly affects how we perceive colour.
Dulux offers various tools to assist consumers in choosing colours.
Colour stories capture moods and feelings in design.
Colour can aid in wayfinding for individuals with special needs.
Sustainability is a key focus in paint production.
Different colours evoke different psychological responses.
The Colour in Design Awards support and recognize creative talent.

Dulux Details

Dulux.co.uk

Duluxheritage.co.uk

Download @ App Store for Dulux Trade Paint Expert App For Interior Designers

www.Colourindesignaward.org

Marianne Shillingford - Insta m_shillingford

Website - www.marianneshillingford.com

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Colour and Creativity
02:04 The Role of Colour in Interior Design
04:23 Nature as Inspiration for Colour Palettes
07:32 The Psychology of Colour
10:16 Trends and Comfort in Colour Choices
12:43 Understanding Light and Colour
15:36 Tools and Resources for Colour Selection
18:36 Creating Bespoke Colour Experiences
20:33 Colour Stories and Their Significance
24:40 The Color of the Year: A Global Perspective
26:35 Color Psychology: Seeking Happiness and Adventure
28:36 Designing for Inclusivity: Color in Care and Education
30:56 The Science of Color: Understanding Perception and Emotion
32:11 Sustainability in Paint: Reducing Waste and Recycling
35:04 Color Psychology in Spaces: Dining Rooms and Beyond
37:31 Creative Use of Color: Hallways and Corridors
39:30 Empowering Young Creatives: The Color in Design Awards
42:19 The Future of Paint: Sustainability and Community Engagement
48:14 New Chapter

ALL ABOUT DESIGN

 email - contact@allaboutdesign.online
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 Novo Interiors - www.novointeriors.co.uk
Insta novointeriors_uk
email - susan@novointeriors.co.uk

Music Credits
 Music from #Uppbeat 
 https://uppbeat.io/t/hartzmann/good-feelings
 License code: GFDQBSDPBEIR08XJ
 
 Music from #Uppbeat
 https://uppbeat.io/t/oliver-massa/orange-clouds
 License code: 9HPDRFIOL6DVYLVD
 
 Music from #Uppbeat
 https://uppbeat.io/t/all-good-folks/thrive
 License code: XPA3DJXY7HJFSPBJ
 

Transcript

Welcome to All About Design and I am beyond excited to be here with Marianna Shillingford the Creative Director of Akzo Nobel which is better known perhaps in the UK as Dulux and we are going to talk all about colour and what this lady doesn't know about colour isn't worth knowing so welcome Marianne. I'm very happy to be here. And perhaps you could just tell us a little bit about what you do. 

my goodness, what do I do? That is an incredible question because probably ask me what I don't do. But basically my job here at Colour HQ is to inspire people to use colour in creative ways that express themselves with more confidence. And so the majority of my job is writing about colour, curating colour palettes and helping people unlock the power of colour in their own homes or their own projects if they're interior designers. 

But then on top of that, I keep the archive. I meet designers and architects and colour scientists, decorators, our own staff here, incredible, passionate experts in their fields. tomorrow I'm going to a big sustainability show. So colour is at the heart of everything I do, it's by no means, seems to colour, seems to open doors to a million one different things every day. Paint has 

alchemy about it it's a magical ingredient people put so much trust in a paint chart and if you've got a project to do once you've got a paint chart in your hand you feel like okay I'm on the road so I think paint is a magical component of any interior design project. I also think it's the signal of the end of a project if you think about all the preparation the dirty work the building the foundations putting on the plaster it's when you get to the paint when you've 

finally see the job is completed it's the finishing touch to cherry on the cake so yeah paint has a magical quality and it's probably the easiest part of the job to do covers up a multitude of sins you know if you want it to but it it marks the end 

of the job and the beginning of life in the space. And how did colour become such a driving force for you? my goodness. Well, if anybody's ever heard me talk before, I'm very passionate about this. My dad was a rose grower, so we were bought up on a rose nursery. And my dad used to spend his days breeding roses that were the right colour, in the right perfume. It takes a long time to breed a new rose. And we were surrounded by sixty 

acres of living colour in perfume and when it came to putting together the catalogue for the year's roses 

he used to pore over getting the print, the printed version of the rose exactly the same as the rose that you would see in the fields which is incredibly difficult. So right from an early age I realised how important it was, how colour was so important to unlock the success of something and being surrounded by roses it sort of had this sensory element to it because the darker the red the rose was or some of the dark red roses smelt glorious and so I 

associated colour with a sensory experience with childhood with storytelling. My dad was a great storyteller and so colour was something that was just absolutely rooted in 

how I was brought up was rubbish at school, to be honest. was terrible. I was brilliant. I'm going say it's up to you. Modesty aside, I was quite good at painting and very good at colouring in. And so all of the attention I used to get at school was, you know, while we were doing a maths test, I might hand in to the teacher a picture of a parrot. was brilliant. And that would distract them from any of the maths that I was doing or lovely doodles around the edge. 

I realised as well colour was really important but also creativity was an outlet. So this job that I find myself in today is the perfect job for a woman like me. yeah, I am the happiest woman on earth when it comes to work. That's lovely to hear And obviously nature colour palettes you mentioned your father 

roses. A lot of the time when I'm put together a colour scheme look at nature as a really good starting point because it never gets it wrong. Mother Nature never gets anything wrong. We have in our garden ranges, so Cuprinol our garden shades range within Cuprinol, a paint collection, has two families of colour in. 

Nature's Neutrals and Nature's Brights and we basically copy what nature does. So all of Nature's Neutrals are all the colours that we see around us in nature, the sky, the pasture, the land, the stone, the raw materials of nature that always work together because whenever you look at a landscape you don't go oh that's a bit out of place unless it's man-made it's always working together. So we call these a sort of bedrock, Nature's Neutrals and then we have a smaller palette of things that we call Nature's Brights and these represent the 

flowers the butterflies, those amazing colours that you see popping up in spring and summer, there are less of them, but when you add them to the neutrals, they're the ones that are the kind of rock stars, they're the ones that draw your attention, put a smile on your face. And when you balance, if you have Nature's Neutral they all work together in any combination, and then you pop in your Nature's Bright like putting in a contrasting colour, it's the thing that adds the flavour to, the visual flavour to a scheme. So that's in the garden, but All of our colours, 

in Dulux when you go right back to the beginning they were all inspired by nature. It is the source of everything. The names, that you've come up with or your department, people that you work with have come up with, they're just beautiful. So how, where did they come from? Well we have this process called alchemy which is basically, if you've got a really beautiful colour but a rubbish name 

that colour will not be a success for us. You've got a good colour with a good colour name. And alchemy is process of taking two words, one of those words and putting them together to make the colour name. So one of those words takes you to the colour. So for example, sky or pasture. So if I say sky, you're thinking blue. If I say pasture, you're thinking green. So that would be one colour that would take you to the colour. And then another is a colour that takes you to the way it might make you feel an emotion or a... So it could be the word soft. 

So could be soft pastures, soft forest. could be mysterious glenn. So if I say mysterious, you're going to think dark and you're going to think moody. And if say glenn you're going to think greens, you're going to think the mountains, you're going to think of a really dark green. So what I'm trying to do with the name is paint a picture of the way it looks and kind of is going to feel in the space. it's, and when you get it right, it's an amazing coming together of two creative things. 

And also we want our customers to talk about the colour story on their walls. If it's got a terrible name, you're not gonna say, I'm trying to think of some dreadful name. if it's not a great name and you're having it on your bedroom. So example, here we are, lovely example. Dulux Heritage is a beautiful, beautiful colour called Raven's Plume. 

when you say, I've got Raven's Plume on the wall, there's something lovely about that, or Midnight Teal. it's the description of the colour that makes you, it paints a picture in your head as well as on the walls. Visualises it. Those names are evocative aren't they? Engages the eyes, engages the the heart. 

Is there a top 10 of colour at the moment. Obviously it's changing every year, but what's in, what's out. What's in, what's out. 

pinks are have always well they've been growing for the last 10 years it's very very soft subtle shades of pinks and clays so pinks clays terracotta is making a comeback beautiful chestnut browns are making a comeback and I think this is related to these are these are the colours of comfort and home and things that make us feel comfortable they're what we call advancing colours so they kind of put their arms around you in a space and I think the world is in a state of anxiety you know where we there's lots going 

on and we love our comfort zones we love our comfort blankets we come back to the familiar and so that could be a little bit about that so that they're growing and I mean we'll always sell millions and millions and millions of litres of whites and off-whites because they make small spaces seem bigger and they help us to feel less hemmed in but what we've noticed over the last three or four years this wonderful embracing of the deep dark blues and greens so I've got this wonderful colour called Sapphire Salute 

beautiful rich deep it's extraordinary blue and that's become one of our top sellers and another one called Emeral Glade 

Beautiful beautiful colours another thing it's a connection with nature It's a connection with the familiar, but also maybe these are the colours that help us unwind and sleep So, know if you're finding it hard to sleep, you don't have a really really bright bedroom You want us to immerse yourself in the night the forest in the night forest you imagine you're outside underneath the stars and being surrounded by these beautiful deep colours that are rich and They're just gorgeous and I think there's something there about sleep about relax 

relaxation So yellows Are seeing a moment I mean we have Colour of the year this year True Joy was as bright bright yellow And we don't expect everybody will be painting a huge wall of yellow But you know just a pop of yellow somewhere. it's just like a jelly bean It's like a visual treat. The colour is called True Joy because this these little pops of 

yellow in a space can really lift the spirits. Definitely, it's like the daffodils coming up isn't it? Just instantly feel better. it reminds us that winter's over, that spring is here, that summer's around the corner. So yellow is, we see it on the catwalk, we're seeing it in interiors, seeing it in lots of hotel design, it's that kind of like a shot of dopamine yellow. And we're seeing it come through in interiors on the ceiling, an amazing thing. In the little reveals, so know when the edge of the window as you look outside just painting that yellow, 

making all the sunshine come into the space. So yellow is having a moment, all yellows, not just the bright ones, the buttery yellows, the soft mustardy yellows. So the wonderful thing about my job is that one of the many wonderful things is that it's changing, constantly changing. 

The interesting thing is, I'm sorry I go on, get terribly carried away and excited. It's so closely related to the human condition. It's about what we want and what we need from the places we live and the places we work and colour is so important. You know when you're dressing up to go out you're putting something on and you're going to a party, you put the best lipstick on, some nice earrings, a bit of colour, a flash of something and you're showing off, you're putting on a party. 

And I think that we use colour to... 

calm things down, to heat things up, to celebrate. It's so closely related to the way that we feel. And as we are moving in these uncertain times and people are feeling like we're walking on a cake walk of life, we're worried about everything, we return to these familiar, comforting, home comfort colours, colours of biscuits, the colours of wood, the colours of natural materials, things that don't demand our attention because everything is demanding our attention. 

And I love to see that development of colours. So it's less about the stuff that you're seeing in the shops. So we used to, I would say about 10, 12 years ago, we'd be looking at what's happening on the catwalk, what's happening in design, in interior design. And we're still looking at that, but we're much more looking at what... 

want and what they need for themselves. 

themselves. Emotionally, you know, the way that colour makes people feel and there are some general things, know, there are some colours that do engender a feeling with the majority of people but then colour can be very personal. This is why an interior designer like you is going to help somebody find the perfect palette for themselves and help them to unlock the way they feel within a space. 

You were mentioning earlier about the smell of the roses, often colour evokes that as well and your response isn't just aesthetic, it's almost could take you back to a childhood nursery that you used to go to and you might not like that colour because of that reason. you know it's very interesting, the psychology of colour 

why do we have this response to I think we all speak the same language. think in terms of colour, culturally we might change from country to country because, so for example, in China red an auspicious colour, it's enormous good luck. You take that colour into Spain or into Britain and that can mean something else. It can mean passion, can mean danger, it can mean stop. So it's an incredibly powerful colour around the world and we all have an incredibly powerful response to it. 

just culturally there will be differences. But I mean you think about a lot of our colours relate to food, cookie dough, chocolate. All of these sort of look great. And as soon as you sort of see, you look at cookie dough and you think, oh, that's delicious. And you think about these associations that we have, it is a universal language. Unless you are colour impaired or colour blind, we all speak the same language and we all have an opinion. Think about the first question. 

ask your first friend at school to work out what gang you're going to be in, it's what's your favourite colour. So we establish our little cultural gangs by asking that colour because it's the first thing, it's the first sort of decision that we make as little people I think. I highlighted in the very first podcast actually is how colour is affected by the direction of the light coming into the space. It's something I 

think people really consider. If you can talk a little bit more about how it's affected? It's one of my, it's one of my, mean, colour is just different, it's just different wavelengths of reflected light from a surface. And the quality of light that shines on a colour will affect it more than anything else. And also the reflected light. So for example, if you had a blue carpet and you've got pink walls, the blue and the pink together makes purple and so the pink would appear purple. So light is hugely important. We have this incredible light. 

tool on the Dulux Heritage site which helps you see colours in different light conditions so not only through the day but also in south, east, west facing rooms with cool artificial light with warm artificial light so it really gives you a sense of how dramatically a colour can change throughout the day and in different lighting conditions. As an interior designer you know this and as a paint manufacturer or a paint company we know that one of the 

biggest 

things that we have to control, we have to help people understand is that the colour in your friend's living room is not going to look the exact same colour, it's not going to look the same in your living room because the aspect might be different, your furniture reflecting might be different, there might not be the same kind of light levels, so we're always saying, you know, get a tester, test it out, test it out, but lighting is everything, it's everything in colour. Yeah, we've launched an amazing lighting tool, check it out because it is quite incredible, just to help people 

Understand the importance of getting a tester before you spend all your money on the wrong kind of paint 

I mean we do have a guarantee that if you don't like the paint we will replace the paint if you don't like the colour, That's amazing that you have that well if you bought something and you've got it on the walls and you've painted it You don't like it. We will replace that and what other the tools I know Dulux is such a helpful company in terms as an interior designer if I was wanting to paint say a kitchen for example or some metalwork I could get in touch and say 

could you give me the right specification? But what other tools do Dulux offer for a consumer? 

Well, the website's a fantastic place for inspiration and advice. We have a customer service team that are unbelievable. So old school telephone call to the customer service team, they're incredible. So they will give you advice from colour advice to where to find, to what products you need for a specific surface. And that's a lovely, they're an amazing department. But on the website, you'll find all of the information about all of the products. We've got a new incredible primer called Uni Primer. 

multi-surface primers for difficult surfaces, you're painting over tiles or if you want to paint your UPVC front door, you know. So all of those kind of wonderful products for different surfaces will be able to help you about that. we have colour visualising tools for the professionals like interior designers. We've got the eye for colour. We've got the little, little spectrometer tools. 

Loads and loads and loads of things I could go on forever. And of course, an old school fandecks So when you've got, because I like to get my hands on Yeah, they're brilliant. I love them. No, no, I love them. and one thing you might love, and I'll show you a little bit later on, or maybe there's a link in your podcast. We have an app called, it's called, it's the most unsexy name for an app, I do apologise, but it's called the Dulux Trade Paint Expert App for Interior Designers. 

It's mouthful, yeah. But it's fabulous because it's got a colour picking tool on there. So you can download a photograph of a room or a piece of material or something and it's got a colour picking tool that find thousands of colours within that item and it will start to put the colour scheme together for you. It's magical, absolutely magical. So people can go and get things custom mixed in the Dulux paint. So I think, people will not be aware of that. only get what's in the colour chart. 

No, no, will colour match. We didn't used to do it, but we do it now. if there's any of our competitors, Farrow & Ball, Craig and Rose, and if you want that colour, but if your decorator or your designer wants it in a Dulux specification, we'll mix up any colour. So we have thousands of colours, but we'll mix up and match. And if you take the colour, if you've got a colour for a specific thing, you can take it into a Dulux decorator center. They've got the most incredible spectrometers, which is a colour measuring tool. Pop that on the top and they'll be 

to get you an exact match. You can also Sue, If you as a designer wanted to have a palette of colours based on your favourite materials, you could go into a Dulux decorator centre or design centre or even download the app. 

and we won't just make you that colour or match you that colour, you can name it. So you can have your own collection of colours with your own name in your local Dulux decorator, keep that on our system for you and you'll be able to order that and it's your own bespoke colour thing. that's quite special. Yeah, it is special because as an interior designer you must have your favourite colours, you must have these colours that you go to palette where you go, I know this looks fantastic. you can create something completely bespoke for you. 

In my own home, I've got a lot of aquas because I just find it so calming and I have to try and always go away from it to challenge myself with something different it for me, it just makes me feel... 

breathe, can work, but when I'm designing for clients it's getting to know them and what they do or don't like and sometimes testing them with colour because I think a lot of people tell you they're afraid of colour they'll get me in to get them away from the beige and the greys when you actually live with it for a little bit and it doesn't have to be everywhere 

Colour is just such joy and emotion something small to start with and build up your confidence 

One of the things we talk about, we talk about colour and in our heads we suddenly imagine a bright palette, but we have 150 different shades of white in just one of our whites. So colour is, it's every little nuance of, so when you're choosing fabrics or putting something together, you're looking at nuanced palettes that are very, very subtle. The majority of the bedrock of colour are nuanced neutrals, warm and cool neutrals. 

And then when we talk about colour, I think people get scared of it. Again, it's another word. We talked about the word yellow earlier. People don't really like the word yellow. And when you say the word colour, in people's mind they immediately think red, blue, pink, yellow, orange. They think about bright colour. It's much more nuanced than that. The majority of your base palette will be the wood, the natural materials, just natural things which will give you a backdrop on which to put. 

something much more dramatic. And it's amazing how, for example, a neutral can suddenly take on a lilac hue or a yellow hue, 

So when you do test out of paint at home, how would you suggest do it? Do you do it on a piece of paper, directly onto the wall? Yeah. mean, do it directly onto the wall. I mean, if you're going to paint, might as well paint, put it on the wall, and at least you've got a flat surface. 

piece of paper or a piece of card keep it nice and flat try and keep it so you want to be able to see the colour on a flat surface if it's got a ripple you won't really pick up the colour so if you've got a piece of cardboard an old cardboard box you know we've got hundreds from Amazon paint one of those out sticks in there I would also do two places so if you can do a corner where the two walls meet and have the colour right up to the corner to see or to see if you've got two colours on different walls make sure they meet because when they're just sitting in the middle of 

wall and they're surrounded by another colour you really struggle to imagine how that would look on a big surface. Another thing to do is download the Dulux Visualiser and it will show you what the colour is going to look on the walls and it will also pick up the shadows and the lights. It will give you an impression you need to buy a tester as well you must but it will just give you an impression of what you suddenly can start to paint your walls in different colours and get a bit brave with it and then go and get testers of the favorites and you can take little photographs. 

you can even do the visualiser onto static images as well. It's a great tool, it's just a free app and it's absolutely brilliant and we're improving it all the time so it gets better and better. if you downloaded it five years ago and didn't find it any good, download it again and yeah, it should be good. And can you tell us about the colour stories that you have? Colour stories, now... 

They used to be called colour trends. I hate the word trends and I think most interior designers do because trend sounds like something that we ought to be doing and following And actually colour tells a rich story. So when we're putting a story together what we're trying to do is we're trying to capture a mood of the moment, a vibe, a feeling. And so we might have a palette of colours called calm colours or calm colour story which create in... 

in any combination together they will create an environment that's calm. 

And when we put a colour story together or a palette of colours, it will be a limited palette of colours to not be bamboozle people, because more is not always more. But when we put a colour story together or a palette of colours, it will all interact with each other. Not necessarily all for the walls. It can be across furniture, furnishings, the accessories. So if you take a palette and you start to say, okay, I'm going to use this one on the wall, and I'm going to use this one here on a piece of furniture, but the rest of the colours in the palette is not going to be paint. It's going to be about 

the materials, accessories. And we call them stories because they tell a story, they capture a mood of the moment. And we've got a bold palette this year, and we've got a proud palette this year, and a proud colour story is about being proud of where you've come from, whether that's Devon or whether that's Africa. 

So it's being proud of your environment, your heritage, your history and it's pulling on colours that actually intersect different cultures. So we have these incredible raw, gorgeous, natural organic shades that we see all over the world, in all of our heritage and we take in those heritage palettes and it sort of connects the past with the present. 

But when you see those colours it makes you feel grounded and they're colours that you can celebrate something that's really unique to you or your culture. And it doesn't have to be from another country, it's you, it's about you. Yeah, they tell stories, colours tell stories, your interiors tell stories of who you are. That's helping people that haven't got a lot of confidence feel, I can actually approach this and I know I'm going to get it right, so that's such a helpful tool. 

So this is all I do, or all we do here at Dulux, is we want to give you colours that help you to be a successful interior designer and to help people to have beautiful spaces to live in. So we're giving you tools. We're not telling you what to do, but we're giving you inspiration and all of our colour research around the world will feed that in. So we do huge amounts of research. 

to create palettes that are tools for our customers and tools to unlock the potential of the space. It's not about telling people what to do, it's about inspiring them. 

To arrive at a colour of the year must be quite a feat. is. And colour of the year, I mean the idea that there's one colour, just one colour and that's the other one, it's silly really because it's a story, the Colour of the Year captures a story. So this year it's True Joy because that's what we need. 

So when we talk about colour, it's what we want and what we need. We might not all use loads of yellow, but just a little bit of yellow is the thing that will put a smile on our faces. So for this year, there was a sort of mood of the moment that we captured in, we say it just leap. 

What we mean by just leap is Don't wait for those exciting things to happen. Just do it. You know, you can hold your breath forever. 

you've got to actively seek out happiness. We have to actively go out into out of our comfort zones and seek out the good stuff because the good stuff will not generally come to you if you're sitting at home waiting for it to happen. And True Joy that little pop of yellow is just leaping. You have to take a leap of faith to use a bit of yellow in your home and especially such a bold colour and it was capturing this sense that take a leap. 

just try, move out of your comfort zone, leave Barbie land, get in the car and drive out. And that's the sort of sense that, we've been living in a... 

in a state, we talk about anxiety and we talk about this state of nervousness and fear and uncertainty about the future. And there's only so much time that we can spend hiding away from it in a cocoon, in a calming cocoon. Great to come back to, but as human beings, we're hardwired to adventure. And I think that pushing ourselves outside of comfort zone is where the fun happens. 

Can you tell us a little bit more about the research that you use? I read some fascinating things about in education 

settings and also in care homes. In dementia and care homes and neurodiversity, so designing for people with different needs It all started with creating a thing called colour and contrast. So imagine if you're visually impaired and the building's starting to fill with smoke and you're trying to find your way out. If all of the surfaces in the room are painted in a similar kind of grey, you are not going to find the door. 

So if you paint the door 

and the walls and the floor or you colour them with 30 points of difference in terms of light reflexes value. What that means is dark or lighter. So they really stand out. Then somebody who's visually impaired or has dementia can find their way out of that space. And in terms of dementia, we can use colours to help people wayfinding within a building and feeling more confident. You're going to keep them safe in their own homes. So you start to use colour to help people to navigate around a space. 

and make it more comfortable and to build confidence. 

in education helping children to focus in an exam it might be a slightly different colour or focus on the teacher at end of the classroom might be a slightly different colour for children with anxiety or to create spaces within buildings where people who are anxious can actually be calm but then for people who might have ADHD or might need that fizz to create spaces for them as well. 

Design is so exciting and it's so rich at the moment of possibilities to be able to create spaces that are tuned into us as human beings and make us function better and live longer and safer in our own homes. I mean, that's amazing, isn't it? So you can find out all about colours for dementia. We've got a palette to help alleviate a migraine or to help to sort of not trigger a migraine. 

There are so many things up so on the website, Dulux Trade Paint Expert, there are lots of bits of information about that. You can always phone us and we'll come and give you advice about what to use or just help. For example, in the 

migraine palette. they're obviously muted tones. colours. mean, yellow, although we're talking about True Joy can be a trigger for migraine. So it's a colour that, you know, in intensity you would avoid. We did this in conjunction with the National Migraine Centre and a company called TEVA And we worked with over a thousand migraine sufferers. We developed a visual questionnaire and we 

created a palette of migraine friendly colours and yes you're right these are beautiful colours of nature so the soft celadon greens beautiful soft sage greens blues very soft warming greys no reds no yellows although they're colours that can make us feel safe and cocooned in intensity they're just not great for people who are suffering with migraine. 

It's a lot to take in. don't know the exact science. know what the results were, but I can't claim. wish I could, studies have suggested that intense light or intense colours can trigger a migraine or be part of the cause of migraine. mean, yellow, for example, as a colour can be quite triggering, but as a light can be quite calming and soothing. So there's a lot to learn in this field. that, is what I love about my job every day. 

will happen. mean did you know for example, I was talking to a colour scientist the other day and of course we were painting up bird houses and we were thinking what colour should we paint the bird house and somebody said let's paint the bird house red and pink and I thought really? And then chatted to a scientist friend and he said well cats can't see red but birds can. 

How did they So then, so cats and dogs don't see colours, they see things in sort blues and yellows but they don't see red. But if you paint a bird house or a hedgehog house in a pink or red, they can't see it but you can. So you can see it and keep an eye on it in the garden, your kids can see it, you can enjoy this, the birds can see it, insects can see it, but the cats can't. So you might paint something, a bird house in a green to hide it and yes that would hide it to an extent from it, but actually you could paint it red and the cats still wouldn't see it. 

The cat's only tuning into the flicker and the contrast. So I thought what a brilliant, I never knew that. So here I am at this age learning something new about the colour. 

Brilliant, because you'd think, I'll hide it in the garden so the cat doesn't see it. Don't need to, paint it red. That's the message, paint your bird houses red. Yeah, red, orange, can't see it. Brilliant, my goodness me. 

mentioned there's paint for everything, but when we're talking about using colour, it doesn't just have to be on the walls. You mentioned the ceiling, that's the big thing, colour drenching at the moment, 

also, think neutrals have their space. We were talking about greys earlier there are some beautiful greys out there as well which can be used as a supporting act perhaps. Absolutely, mean, greys are the ultimate stage on which you put other colours and they're just the ultimate neutral. They don't have any colour in them at all. 

really like the subtle greys with the greys with a hint of green and blue. I like those greys with a hint of red even in them. So the greys that are quite subtle and different and they play their part. And grey just black and white. The true greys can be quite cold but then they also work with every other colour so they're hugely versatile. 

I was aware growing up that we always had this much paint left in the bottom of every tin and it would sit there for years and years and then eventually probably get taken to the tip. So I was really excited to hear about how sustainable Dulux is and can you talk to us about how you can get rid of these paints into a really good cause? Well the first thing is there's a paint calculator on the website and also if you go into a decorator's merchant or any DIY shop it 

try and buy the right amount of paint for the job so you don't have stuff left over. we want every, no drop gets wasted. Nobody gets left behind, no drop gets wasted. 

We support this thing, I've been running this thing for years called Community Repaint. So if you've got a little bit of paint left in a can and it doesn't matter, it doesn't have to be Dulux, it can be anybody's paint. And you look for your local Community Repaint Centre which will be usually at your tip or recycling centre, take your paint there, leave it with them, they will gather together all of the good stuff and the stuff that's usable and they will donate it to charities or small businesses can come and buy it for peppercorn amounts of money. So all usable paint. 

can get reused, all of the stuff that can't be used is made into new paint. Wow. So, and then we recycle cans. 

The idea is that we never waste it. It's not cheap. I know that it's probably the cheapest part of an interior design, but it's not cheap. And also, wants to put paint down the drain. mean, if you clean a roller properly, and you have one of these roller cleaners, just a piece of metal with a bent piece of metal, you'll get 250 ml of paint off a roller. That's a lot of paint. Yeah. And it's also a lot of paint to put down. 

the drain, if you're going to clean the roller, most people throw their rollers away. Buy a really good quality roller, buy a roller cleaner, scrape what you can back into the tin, and then use a bucket to clean the roller and let the paint settle to the bottle and pour off the clean paint. There are ways of doing things, it's like take as much paint off the roller, as much paint off the brush before you clean it. 

We don't think about these things probably as painters and decorators, but we need to think about them more. And we try wherever we can to educate. yeah, we don't want to waste a drop. It's expensive, it's beautiful. And give it to neighbours you know. If you give a tin of paint to a friend or a neighboUr or a local school, because you can paint with it at schools, or art college, people who are doing stuff with, you know, our tester pots are used by... 

artists all over the world and they're brilliant I mean a brilliant source of really cheap brilliant colour so yeah the mantra is never waste a drop that's really good to hear and I think people weren't aware that you can do that so you can spread the word I will definitely wherever I go wonderful community repaint 

Could you give us some insights about how you feel colour effects us in a sort of a general roundup 

say somebody's thinking, I want to paint my dining room. Could you give us your psychology of colour because it's fascinating. Well, in a dining room, what are we doing in a dining room? We're entertaining our friends. We're eating food together. We're drinking. We're talking. We're having a lovely time. So what are the colours that will stimulate an appetite and conversation? Those colours are reds and oranges, so rich colours. can use greens as well. That's a neutral colour. 

But generally, if you're to get things going and exciting, if you're using deep, rich reds, terracottas, clay colours, those are the colours of ripe fruit. So we are basically animals. And when we see yellows and reds, we immediately think, ooh, it's a ripe fruit. That's something that's gonna taste good. And so it stimulates our appetite, but it also stimulates conversation. 

The reds are fantastic in a dining room in a situation when you're coming together with friends for an evening and there's going to be lively conversation, food's going to taste great. But if you put a red, bright red in a family kitchen with teenagers, you're possibly going to have the food tasting better, but you might have a few rows. So super stimulating colours that stimulate the appetite, conversation, brilliant for a dining room, possibly too much for a family. 

maybe you would dial that red down into a terracotta or an orange or yellow those colours that get your taste buds going because as soon as we see red colours we start to we start to go mmm that's nice yeah yeah and I heard something about if you you want to lose weight colours that aren't natural absolutely so blues I mean blue is great 

There's a study about making the light cooler in a kitchen, so blue light in a kitchen. You eat less because it's unappetising. Nothing tastes great. look at lovely warming light in the kitchen. The ice creams are out, the chocies out, and those are colours that make you just relax. But if you make it slightly less comfortable, so intense blues, green is a colour that sits between... 

It's a healthy colour, it's a wonderful colour for a kitchen and the greens and reds in combination is fantastic. But if you're to go blues and purples, those are the things that we're least likely to put in our mouths. yeah, the slightly purply light, the slightly fluorescent light will definitely, yeah, you won't be heading for the fridge I going say, I might put one in my fridge. that's it. That's good. my goodness. And what colours do you think? 

good for hallways and passing places because everyone tends to forget those exist half the time. And actually that's the introduction to your house isn't it? I quite like this thread of colour moving along the skirting and around the the doors and the architraves and then keeping the maybe keeping the walls in a paler colour and creating a gallery with all of your pictures so you're telling a story of your life along the walls but actually the colour thread 

is in the skirting boards and the doors. I think that's something that's coming through at the moment. It's very practical as well, because you've got a bit of colour on the skirting boards and doors. You don't have to clean them. You don't see the dirt. And it sort of frees you up to do things that are more creative with your stuff. In terms of corridors, there's this wonderful thing. There's a wonderful saying. So colour takes the credit, but tone does all the work. Well, that means that you remember the colour. 

but the actual depth of the colour is the thing that does the work within a space. So if you've got a long skinny corridor and you're heading down that skinny corridor and you want to make it look foreshortened, if you put a dark colour at the end, the dark colour will advance towards you and it will make that long corridor look less long and skinny. It will make it look shorter and wider. So dark colours advance, pale colours recede. So you can use that idea to make a corridor much more interesting and use colour in pockets to change your visual. 

if you paint the ceiling it brings it down, dark colour brings it down, you might have a really high ceiling that you don't want to be so lofty that you want to bring down. Dark always advances. 

pale recedes. I love the idea that colour takes the credit. So colour is the one that you, but it's actually the tones of things that will do the work. 

Dulux and particularly yourself are looking after and sponsoring the Colour in Design Awards. It's a Colour in Design Award is something very close to my heart. My dad left me some money when he died and I, everybody wants money. And I thought actually, 

you know what, could do something better with this. So we used to do a thing called the colour awards and it stopped for some reason or other and I thought I need to regenerate this. And so we do awards throughout the year where we recognise and reward great use of colour in design by graduates. And it's where people are using colour really mindfully. So it's not just about colourful things, it's about colour being used. 

to make the world a better place. So whether that's natural colour or whether that's colour to help somebody way find, whether that's colour to help stimulate children's creativity, however the colour rocks up, whether it's in fashion, digital, video, illustration, it's across all creative mediums. And it's quite something. So the Color and Design Award is something that I started. 

Dulux are wonderful, they support, support and sponsor prizes throughout the year. They let me go off and do my thing, is wonderful, which is more support than anybody needs. But we've got a whole generation of creatives who are being squeezed and squashed. In an uncertain world, not many people are taking up the creative arts, and yet I've enjoyed the best life. I could have lived on this earth as a creative, and there is so much potential out there. I'm really... 

keen on helping young creatives find the commerce in their craft. helping them find a job, helping them find their path. And so we do the awards, just bit of money and recognition, but also a bit of mentoring as well. It's only tiny, It's a lovely thing and it's close to my heart because it's all about colour. But if you can promote colour, because of the emotion it brings, 

and help people not be afraid to use it because they've been inspired by seeing something that you've done. it's wonderful isn't it? I love this idea. I think about this a lot because I do work in paint and it is quite, it's fun isn't it? Nobody dies in paint. When you're painting and decorating it's not a dangerous sport but it does bring joy. 

It really does bring joy and it's something that, know, if you're decorating a space, you think about it, don't you? want it to look great, but you want it to be part of you. So, and when you've done it right, there's nothing more satisfying than putting on a great colour and everybody going, oh, that's so lovely. So I'm very lucky that, yeah, you do help people to feel a bit happier. And I think sometimes a bit of a missed opportunity if you think, oh, I'd love to go for that deep sapphire blue, but... 

just paint it sky blue you might just wonder what you can use your tools obviously to see what it could look like at the end of the day if you feel that you just want to try it just do it because the 

Overriding thing will be joy every time you walk in and see it 

you were talking about sustainability, you're going off to a conference tomorrow. obviously, your company is a producer of millions of litres a year. Absolutely. So we are a a big, paint company and 

We need to make sure that we look after the world that we're servicing in the future. And paint, you think about it, paint is not just decorative. It's a protective surface coating for the very expensive elements in your house and garden. So we need to make great colours, but we also need to make great paints. So making a great paint that lasts a long time is tough. It's one part of sustainability. Another is to make all of our paints water-based. 

So they are VOC free. And that's what we're aiming for. Most of our paints are 99.9% VOC free. We have a recycling, community repaint. And also if you're a professional, take your paint cans back to a Dulux decorator centre and they will recycle them for you. Everything we're aiming for is to have a circular manufacturing process. All paint companies need to do the same thing. You know, we are leading in that area. 

And we're very proud of it, but there's more to be done. And so we go off to conferences and learn what other people are doing. We look for best practice within industry. As I said earlier, not a drop should be wasted. And we shouldn't be putting paint down the sink. We should be trying to aim to do best practice all of us. And it's not just us as a manufacturer. It's helping our customers do the right thing as well. So it's absolutely at the heart of everything. mean, 

if you're doing harm to the world, you're not going to get any customers in the future. your core mission is you're making paint. We have this thing called People Planet Paint. And people are our customers. They're actually at the heart of everything we do. So whether it's our passionate scientists and our decorators, the planet is important because we have to look after the planet. If we don't have a planet, we don't have it. 

and we just happen to make paint. So people come first, the planet, and then paint. And so it's sort of a mantra here. 

if you were going to start your own project, what sort of things can you do to guarantee a good outcome? you as a creative have an idea of what it looks like, I guarantee you most people won't. 

So that confidence, creating a mood board, seeing how everything works in conjunction with each other. interior decorator app for interior designers is brilliant for that. But it's creating that mood board, it's selling the idea to yourself and your family and your, being able to see what the finished effect will look like is hugely important. I would say that would be the thing. And then it will give you the confidence 

how it will look if it's slightly tweaked, how it will look if it's slightly tweaked. And the confidence is built before you take your brush out. you don't have to worry as a designer because you know, you know, know yourself, but you also, your customer won't be panicking as well. Also sometimes people just think, I'm going to paint my wall orange and that's all I'm ever going to see. Well actually you will have artwork on it or you might do a trio of... 

big mirrors or you might have like you say a gallery wall so it's a part of the room, the fabric of the room in the end it's not just an orange wall it's a base to to display your life story against which is a little bit more interesting than a beige perhaps or a white Obviously preparation is key for it to be a long lasting job to make spending the money on the paint worthwhile 

We know the boring bit and the horrible bit. teaching my kids as they've been growing up, it's all in the prep, guys, it's all in the prep. You can't just put paint on that skirting board and it will look great for a week and then it won't last. And also if you get the prep right. 

the next time you do it will be simple. It's starting off on that base of making sure that you've got the right fillers, you've got the right undercoats, you've got the right primers. And it's all there. mean, there's so many products now, they're water based, they're quick drying, they don't stink. You know, get a couple of coats on in the day, the job time has been halved, if not more than halved recently. And the products are so hard wearing, they're so tough, you can get the most beautiful. 

beautiful flat matte durable finishes that are gorgeous to look at that make colour sing. But the prep, you cannot get away without the prep. It is the boring bit. It's the boring bit but it's the bit that I would pay for, that is the bit that takes the longest amount of time. Sadly. I know but it will last twice as well. 

And I suppose the last question, which is a difficult one probably for you, what is your favourite colour? Well, you know, I'm wearing these orange tights, I can't hold my legs up here, but there's this orange up here which is quite interesting. I love the colour orange. I find it energising, makes me smile. It's not scary as red, but it has a personality, a buzz to it. It's quite warm and sunny. Whenever I put my orange tights on or anything orange, 

it stops people and they talk to me. It's something that is engaging and it's quite fun. So I come back to orange and I like that colour. When I buy flowers I look for orange flowers and I just like that colour but then it's like asking a mum which is her favourite child and that's not fair really. There are a few colours I don't particularly like and I find quite... 

difficult to use myself. yeah, probably I come back to orange. Brilliant. Well, Marianne, it has been absolutely incredible. I could talk to you all day. your knowledge of colour and how it works is second to none. So thank you so much. a great pleasure. I will put all the links to all the tools, the wonderful Dulux tools that are online on the social media areas. 

And if you have any questions whatsoever, please do email to online at all about design. No, it's not that. What is it? It is. I love it. Leave this in. Don't change this. Leave this in. Contact at all about design dot online. There you go. Got it in the end. thank you so much. It's been great talking to you.