New hues

Carol O’Callaghan says there’s nothing quite like a pot of paint for bringing a fresh new look to a room in your home

WITH the Christmas decorations packed away and the evenings starting to brighten, in just a few weeks we’ll have the western sun filling rooms with a lovely warm light in the late afternoon. Of course, it will show up every speck of dust and square inch of paint yellowed from fires burning throughout winter, and the urge to get out the paint brushes will kick in.

There’s nothing quite like a pot of paint for bringing a fresh new look to a room and, for 2012, there seems to be genuine innovation in the hues available. Lighter pinks have developed a sophisticated take, bearing no resemblance to the pinks that dazzle little girls’ bedrooms. New fleshy pink hues are fresh and clean, offering a subtle warmth that offsets beautifully against pale wooden furniture, touches of white and, rather surprisingly, black.

Popular retro orange, green, and mustard yellows have had a certain dullness and lacklustre but are now vamped up as we tighten our embrace on the style of the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

New versions have a significant depth without being dark, and offer a vibrancy that means they won’t overwhelm our rooms. The suggested use is to confine them to a single wall or certainly on no more than two with white paint detailing to offset the colour, or white furniture such as book cases and side tables.

Grey is probably the interiors surprise of the last several years having become such a popular interiors colour despite all its associations with dreariness. Yet its new variations have brought a sophistication to the shade that is not without warmth and makes a perfect foil for bright colour elsewhere in a room. It also helps to remove intensity and glare that can be off- putting to paint buyers who would like a splash of brightness.

While all this talk of colour, do give careful consideration to how they will actually translate on to the walls of your house, and the impact they will have on the perception of space.

Linking colours from one room to the next is essential if you want to retain a feeling of spaciousness. It doesn’t mean every room has to have the same colour on everything, but that some main colours are repeated from one space to the next. So, for example, the blue on your dining room walls will be repeated in cushions or a rug in your sitting room.

Equally important to the aesthetic effect is to achieve a look that will stand the test of time — at least a few years — and is wallet-friendly. Repeating colours will make your decorating budget stretch further, and allow you to move furniture and accessories from room to room to give each space a fresh feel, and you can be assured they’ll work just fine in their new location without having to incur more spending.

nNext week we go all American rustic as we check into log-cabin style