Color & Paint

We painted the insides of our bookshelves a deep clay red

We painted the insides of our bookshelves a deep clay red to warm the room and sharpen the books colours. The modest weekend project cost li…

Limewashing a brick chimney breast over a weekend, and the cloudy finish we chased.

Our living room had a red-brick chimney breast that fought every other colour in the room. Three thin coats of limewash, brushed on wet, tur…

Testing a moody green in three lights before we painted the whole snug.

A deep green can read as forest, sludge or near-black depending on the light. We painted one tester across three walls of the snug and watch…

Painting our cast-iron radiators the wall colour — a quiet transformation.

Our cast-iron radiators were glossy white and screamed for attention in a soft-painted room. A weekend, a wire brush, and the wall colour la…

Testing four whites in real light — what we got wrong before.

We picked the wrong white twice and a third time was guaranteed to be expensive. Four tester pots and a weekend of light-watching saved us f…

I limewashed our hallway on a Tuesday — here is what I would do differently.

Limewash is the only paint that gets better as you make mistakes with it. After a Tuesday with a brush and a plastic tub, our hallway has th…

The two‑paint test that changed how we choose colour for small rooms

We painted two A4 sheets in three different rooms over the course of a year, taped them to the walls, and lived with those patches until the…