Hello lovely,
Before you get settled into this weeks newsletter…check out how ive managed to make the ugliest house in Somerset…even uglier haha!
Now…on with this Sunday’s newsletter. Sorry its a little late, we’ve been at a family wedding, and navigating an airport with a toddler proved too challenging to whip out the laptop and finish this off until just now! hope you enjoy x
If you're in the middle of a project with a fan of paint cards in one hand and a fabric sample in the other, and everything looks lovely but nothing feels quite right, this one's for you.
Because I've been exactly there, with my own house.
Which brings me to this week's topic: your whole-house colour palette, and where to actually start finding it.
Colour board for the guest bedroom inspired by happy memories from my childhood
Even a colour expert gets stuck
I'm working with this amazing coach at the moment, Fiona, and she's been coaching me a lot with my own house.
Because of what I do and the industry I work in, I almost became a little bit blindsided and a little bit stuck as to what I should be doing in my own home.
When I first started thinking about decorating my own house, I was so fixated on, do I need it to be super colourful because that's what I'm known for as a colour expert? Should it be on-trend? Should it be really stylish so that it can get into all the magazines?
When actually, that's so the wrong thing that I was thinking about.
So if you've got a pile of samples and you think the problem is too much choice, I'd gently say it probably isn't. It's that you haven't yet worked out which colours are yours. And that's completely normal, it's the bit almost everyone skips.
What does colour mean to you?
What does colour mean to me? What's my unique colour palette? This is something I'd love everyone reading this to really tap into.
We've become so all-consumed in the world of Pinterest and Instagram (I've talked about this a lot on my socials and my webinars, and here a couple of weeks ago). But actually, finding colours that you connect with, that tell your story and evoke those positive memories, makes choosing your furnishings and colours so much easier.
Through the exercises I've been doing with Fiona, I've really been tapping into very early positive memories, whether it's from my childhood, or really looking at the space and functionally working out how Sam and I want to use it and use the rooms. You can see a bit of that in the kitchen episode, where I'm walking through the space working out where I want to make my cup of coffee.
It's opened up this wonderful colour palette that I've started putting together.
When you do come to choosing the paint colours, your floor colours, your sofa colours, whatever it is, the feeling of being overwhelmed and having too much choice just dissolves.
Trust your gut, not the colour wheel
There's so much more than just the theory and the technique of colour, like the colour wheel. You know, colour is so personal.
I think we get a bit caught up in the world of, oh, is this going to go? Is that a good combination? Does that work together?
Actually, I want you to trust your gut. Whatever you're instinctively choosing and naturally drawn to, that is the colour combos, and that is the materials and the fabrics that you should be bringing into your home.
It's all well and good going to a colour wheel and looking at, oh god, is it blue and red, or pink and green, and do they sit together on the colour wheel?
It doesn't matter as much.
Your home needs to support you and your lifestyle, the way that you want to operate within your space, and your family.
So almost step away from the world of interiors and look outside the box a bit. Do you love to cook? Have you looked at the recipes and the food that you cook? When you're out on a walk, are you looking at nature? Is it your favourite outfits, the things you love to wear? Is there a piece of art you're really drawn to? When you're listening to music, does it make you feel something?
Tune into those colour combinations. They're already yours.
A mood board for every room
I've been designing a mood board for each of the rooms. And you know what's really nice? It's not a fancy mood board.
I just got myself some white card and all the samples. Everything I'm planning to put into the room, everything I've already got, memories, photographs, anything that can really pull together that palette. I just started sticking it down and seeing if those colours worked in the room.
No software, no perfect layout. If you've got card and a glue stick, you've got everything you need.
Colour board for the main bedroom inspired by time away with Zach and Sam in Cornwall
See it in your own light
It's really important when you try out your paint colours, fabrics and flooring that you actually see them in the room you're planning to decorate.
When I was looking at a lot of these colours, I had lots of options and looked at them in store. I thought, oh, that blue looks lovely, or, I've used that green in a few people's houses and really like it.
But when I brought it into my own home, the light was so different that I ended up going for a different tone, particularly just because it didn't suit the room I was planning to decorate.
That doesn't mean you chose wrong in the shop. It means you tested it properly. (If you want to go a bit deeper on why the same colour behaves so differently from room to room, this one's for you.)
From room to whole house
That's what I've been really working on, really understanding what makes my heart sing, what brings me joy.
And it's now really funny, every room just has flowed so naturally. The process of designing each space has become so easy, and it's going to be really fun to see how that transforms into our own space.
So you don't have to solve the whole house in one go. Get to know what's yours first, and the rooms tend to follow.
Where to start this week
Go back to your earliest happy memories, places, things, people, and notice the colours in them.
Step outside interiors for a week. Look at the food you cook, what you notice on a walk, your favourite clothes, the art and music you love, and jot down the colour combinations you keep coming back to.
Walk through each room and work out how you actually use it, and who's using it.
Get a piece of white card for each room. Stick down samples of everything you're planning, everything you've already got, photographs, anything that holds a memory.
Take your paint, fabric and flooring samples home, and look at them in the room they're actually for.
Trust your gut. If you're naturally drawn to it, don't talk yourself out of it.
Which room are you decorating next?
Because when you understand the colours that you love, that's when it opens up this wonderful world.
And every decision after that gets a little bit lighter.
Episode five: choosing the floors
Episode five of the Bruton series went live this morning, and there's a moment in it that's everything I've been talking about above. My floor samples have arrived, and this is the flooring that's going to dominate the whole of the downstairs.
I think getting the floor right is super important, getting the tone right as well, because it's such a large area that it's really going to impact the way that all of the other colours feel within the space.
Always, always sample in the room that you're going to lay it, because if I was to move this to another room, it's going to look so different because of the light.
There were two more orangey options I'd seen in store and fallen in love with. I remember looking at them at my friend's house and thinking “that's the floor, that's the one I want to go with”.
In here they just don't look right. They look way too orange.
Come back next time and I'm going to show you which one we've gone for, and the impact that it then has on the space.
Tash x
All images sourced from Pinterest unless stated.