The great white hope of decorating

A blanched, neutral look is uplifting, accentuates architecture and the paint is cheap to buy, says Kya deLongchamps

‘White is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, so gaudily, as when He paints in white.’ — GK Chesterton (Victorian writer)

FAR from being an aesthetic cop-out, it takes confidence to decorate with white, but handled correctly the rewards can be a remarkable, fluent space full of character and charm. White highlights great architecture, where the only emphasis that’s needed is the naturally- occurring shadow, not a trumpeting of colour. Despite the bohemian fantasies imposed on their wide-eyed clientele, visit the homes of many TV celebrity designers and you would find clean white interiors, not a pickling of aubergine over gilded tomato reds.