Carrigaline home is awash with colour with French personality
The striking colour scheme at 30 Upper Clevedon Kilmoney in Carrigaline demonstrates its French owners’ flair for the dramatic.
When they bought their home last year, they felt that the three bed semi with its cream and white neutral coloured walls lacked personality.
They decided to rectify this with strong colours including deep blues and bright yellows.
For the couple, a film director and his wife, colour choice is about much more than decoration.
“We have yellow in the living room because it lets us feel that we have sunshine — even in the evenings. Yellow creates a harmonious, warm, friendly atmosphere — it is a colour which is associated with peace, good humour, radiance and wellbeing.”
The strong blue, found in the living room and the kitchen, is the colour of the sea and voyages and reminds the family of the year they spent living on a sailing boat.
Having changed residence 10 times in the last 20 years, the family has now settled in Carrigaline in order to allow their two youngest daughters to go to school there and learn English.
“We came to Ireland in a camper van for four days in April last year and bought the house,” says one of the owners, explaining that they looked at a few options in Cork but chose Carrigaline because of its manageable size and its proximity to amenities, especially schools.
Returning in August, they spent two months buying furnishings and redecorating it from top to bottom.
Furniture mainly came from Harvey Normans and Ikea while the main task was repainting.
The lady of the house, who likes dynamic, stimulating colours, picked out most of them.
The interior was given a complete French makeover, while the exterior is unchanged, although the unconventional hibiscus pink coloured garden shed in the back garden gives an indication that the interior isn’t likely to be magnolia.
In the front living room, the couple painted the walls deep sea blue and added sunshine yellow curtains and furniture.
All of this made quite a dramatic change to a standard walnut floored room with a fireplace and and a bay window.
In the kitchen they painted the units grey and put in French style patchwork wall tiles. Happy to have found them in a tile shop in Cork city, the couple say these are replicas of 19th Century tiles which offer a blend of the vintage and the modern.
To complete the transformation of the room, they used deep sea blue paint to create a feature wall and added yellow curtains and a large paper light shade.
One of the bedrooms has been painted deep red while another, showing that young girls of every nationality share the same taste in colour, has been painted pale pink. The third bedroom is a neutral off-white shade as is the bathroom.
Located a little over 1km from the town centre, No 30 Upper Clevedon is 20-year-old property with 1,000 sq ft of living space and gets a C3 BER rating.
Auctioneer Michael Pigott who sold it to the family last year, is now back, guiding it at €245,000.
“We’ve had very good viewings — people love the colour scheme because it’s so different.”
The owners are staying in Carrigaline but have decided that they need a bigger house.
Leaving their repainted house after just seven months, they say they will miss their friendly and helpful neighbours.
But they have identified a suitable replacement and have already started making plans to repaint it.
A tick-the-boxes starter home with French personality
