Home interiors: Take a fresh look at brown to revamp your space

'It's the original Marmite, with its most infamous hour in the 1970s, when chocolate slouch couches grooved'

Rich, enfolding, perfect with rattan, weaves and pale reflective shades to freshen in a relaxed vintage style. Fleetwood Urbane Bronze (Vogue collection), from €25 per litre, fleetwood.ie.

Brown. It’s familiar, fascinating, the original Marmite, with its most infamous hour in the 1970s, when chocolate slouch couches grooved with canyons of beauty board. In psychology terms, brown has a calming, enfolding quality, resonating with the tones of timber and earth. 

It’s said to deliver a profound sense of serenity, reaching into our primal relationship with nature. Based on the primaries — yellow, red, and blue, brown sings with most colours on the decorator’s colour wheel — a potentially highly versatile decorating choice.

Coronavirus, which has influenced us in all sorts of curious ways, is credited with the return of the brown anchored room, fake distressing, and risible, impractical fashions including the tender touch of snagging boucle. 

Being gently hugged by brown feature furnishing, inclusions and accessorising is one thing. Being buried up to the neck in it, wall to wall, skirting to ceiling - is something else. So, guess what? Brown can do spring, not just a warm winter’s library.

The ghastliest late 20th-century interiors anchor on overly large swathes of oppressing, light-swallowing peanut butter carpeting, ruddy teak, abstract prints and Ikat. Littered with bell-bottomed, smug young counter-culture lovies, pelted in fringed hippy jackets, fingers pinched onto stoneware wine goblets — the clay trench has not aged well. 

Reaching for the organic, the meditative, the architecturally sexy – delivered a listless, monochromatic drab. Attempting a revolutionary jive away from the pert colours of the 1960s, it now reads as dull and stylistically forgettable.

A late mid-century-inspired room set with that classic brown/burst orange groove. Set by Joana Nowak. Sinatra pendant, POA, delightfull.eu.

Brown, sage green and aged-gold landscapes erupting with candlewick bedspreads, cheap “photo” laminate furnishings, tangled shag and mass-produced kitsch, propelled exhausted home decorators into the worst excesses of 1980s pastel for light relief. 

The Brady Bunch home had it all — in particular, the vertical, composite wood panelling that defined every brown retro’ room. I recently toured a period house where found a surviving dark brown bathroom suite. I had to be supported from the room.

So, how can we honour the best of the era of brown now? First, shovel back those brown square metres to include some spirit-stroking shades dissolved into a wider scheme of neutrals, white and companion colours (it will always work on that wood or laminate flooring of course). Avoid close brown-on-brown adventures, which can just look muddy and visually confusing. 

Where cream reigned, it can step aside for a warm white, putty grey or alabaster. Deep conker brown and a full-on 1970s burned orange and gold, are still fantastic together. In textiles, feature wallpapers, rugs, and artwork, this classic triumvirate can make a vintage-inspired but highly contemporary room.

Earthy tones of brown from nutmeg through to a golden caramel, sit effortlessly in furniture and flooring — just watch that you don’t make a small or north-facing room simply too dark with a black-brown suite or bedroom set. Both highlight dust, wear and stains. 

Mid-brown is beautiful with mints, navy blue, sugar almond pinks, biophilic greens of every kind and rain greys. It can strike a youthful Scandinavian tonal look teamed to rattan and wicker, or Hollywood hills chic, sparkling with gilt, glass, and white marble accenting — depending on your taste.

Gingham spring table in brown gingham, €17, rebeccaudall.com.

Brown has an honesty to it, so think about layering on natural feel-good from linen to wool, wood and stone to play on that grounding character and to add texture. Wood panelling should be real where possible, in either a solid species or veneer. If all you can afford is marine-ply, there’s opportunities to show off fantastic timber figuring or fake up some fielded, big-house, painted wainscotting.

Sandy browns with perceptible yellow underpinning offer multiple combinations and are airy enough to try out in just about any room, with wood features, and lashings of white and good oriental carpets. This restrained but discreetly classy modernism has been celebrated in the homes of many artists, celebrities, architects, and designers, including the late Sir Terence Conran. Don’t stray into wince-making orange stains.

Deeply tinted, dramatic dark browns in espresso and chocolate flavours can and are used in both period and modern interiors. Don’t be afraid to consider some spice rather than the expected pacific blues and bruised blacks for a pigment-rich cloak. 

Brighter-coloured timbers, terracotta and copper can sit up as accents on dark brown painted furniture, panelling and walls. Red-based browns with brighter, colourful textiles and gilded elements floated in the foreground. An eclectic stunner.

Break up brown with a paler ground colour. Sitting Cranes offers a chinoiserie Asian hit of good fortune and longevity. €96 a roll, woodchipandmagnolia.com.

Paint choices? Farrow & Ball’s London Clay, is their warmest brown and a perfect example of a brown with a determined pink-red under-tone. Often used as an accent colour for Elephant’s Breath and Charleston Grey, it has a magenta base that’s less dangerous than a flight into queasy aubergine. For a dining room or home office, try their deeper Tanner’s Brown. Sample pots €8, farrow-ball.com.

If you’re fed up with today’s typical greys and greiges, try nut browns and beiges freshened with white. Dulux Brave Ground is in the same family of red-based colours (a little paler than London Clay) and flew off the shelves over the past two years in combination with their Bright Skies and plaster pink, Femme.

Decadent Damson, also from Dulux is a good example of a bluer-based brown – tread carefully with purple browns and ruddier cinnamon shades — consider cooling them off with pure white marriages. 

Rich conker tones teamed with gold are trending for pulls and more. Vegí tanned leather handles, €67 each, pushkahome.com.

Middle Brown by Little Greene is very similar, and they suggest it for a 1930s look for an elegant Edwardian front door, together with Spanish Brown, taken from traditional Iberian, ochre-pigmented paint; sample pots €9.50, littlegreene.eu.

For a slightly more caffeinated mid-brown, Fleetwood’s Coffee Break, described as an “aromatically” deep brown, should be deployed over their Deep Primer Undercoat for a perfect finish - (don’t neglect this step when prepping for any theatrical colour). 

Wooded Walk from Dulux’s Heritage collection is a more slate-shaded brown, taken from walnut. Try it with their Forest Grey, Powder Colour (chalky fragile pink) and Grecian White — a wonderful example of how casually the right tonal brown can sit with a wide selection of our completely new neutrals.