Colour My World

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Posted on 9th Sep 2024 by amaziliapeacock

There was a final task to complete before my John Lewis Home Design Stylist could formulate a plan: to choose colours for my home.

Colour schemes for my previous homes over the years had usually reflected the era of their construction and their location. Neutral shades brightened with colourful accessories were applied to my 21st-century new-build apartment. Stark white walls adorned with a multitude of paintings featured in my 1920s apartment when living in Scandinavia. Had the renovation of my South London Victorian cottage ever been completed, it would have been decorated with a flourish of rich reds, greens and blues. The question of how to apply colour to a traditional English thirties house in an authentic way was a new field of research for me.

I typed “nineteen-thirties colour palettes” into several internet search engines and got a range of results. Despite the variation amongst the responses, I found after sifting through them that they largely agreed on the inclusion of dusky pastel shades and neutral tones. There was also a recurring emphasis on greens and blue-greens, muted pinks and mauves, yellows, orange and reds. I found that range interesting and yet conflicting. I wondered how it had come about.

During that decade, as I’d been learning, there was more than one style co-existing. In Britain, the desire for a healthy manner of living featuring the outdoors and nature led to an emphatic use of green. At the same time, the style which came to be later known as ‘Art Deco’ was still flourishing. Its diverse mix of influences including the Ballets Russes, archaeological discoveries of Egyptian treasures and interest in Japanese art and design – Japonism – led to vibrant reds, yellows, greens and blues and black coming to the fore.

In reality, I had a wide range of colours to work with. To narrow down what might suit my own house, I started to ponder memories of the colours in that childhood home.

I remembered green featuring throughout the house and especially so with the exterior woodwork. I had watched my father blow-torch and scrape away layers of paint from wooden window frames to reveal several shades of green. Then I saw the woodwork being re-painted partly in white and partly with a green of his personal choice.

My mother’s response to all of this was to mutter the phrase – or sometimes to sing it – “forty shades of green”. (That owed more to the Irish singer Val Doonican than it did to Johnny Cash!)

So green was the first colour to go on my list. I’d been encouraged by my Home Stylist to find images – whether from retail websites or from artworks – to illustrate colours which appealed to me. One day, just as I was taking a short-cut through the furniture department in Harrods in London (yes, really, but it’s too long a story to explain!) my eyes fell upon a beautiful marble-topped dining table. It was surrounded by chairs upholstered in the richest dark green velvet. I knew instantly that this would become my theme. The furniture was made from cherry wood stained a rich, red-brown colour. It seemed to perfectly capture the richness and warmth I wanted my home to possess.

The furniture I was looking at had been designed and produced by the French company Roche Bobois. The design range on display was named Eden Rock. I was given a brochure by a member of the sales team and that booklet became the mainstay of my home design inspiration.

Roche Bobois’ furniture range “Eden Rock” as depicted in their “Creations” Autumn -Winter 2019 brochure

I had started the process of better understanding the factors influencing colour palettes of the nineteen thirties. As a result, I felt better prepared to choose colours for my own home.

I still had more specific ideas and requirements for certain rooms, but at least I had a starting point. The image in that little brochure would serve as the foundation for planning my main living areas.

The design process was really getting underway!

A.P. 9 September 2024

Photo Ownership:

Window: Privately owned photograph.

Where Do I Begin?

Posted on 1st Mar 2021 by amaziliapeacock

The house and garden I was about to renovate may have been very modestly sized but my list of tasks wasn’t. There was a roof and guttering to repair, windows to replace, an electrical system and a heating system to upgrade, a kitchen and bathroom to replace and then the whole property to decorate and furnish.

For someone who has never worked in construction or in any trade to do with home maintenance, my dilemma revolved around the order in which this list of works should be tackled. To someone more experienced – or trained – than I was, the answer would have been glaringly obvious. The answer was not obvious to me, however, and it proved to be a source of anxiety.

I began writing – and re-writing – lists of what I thought the order of works should be but then something stirred in my memory from the episode of my disastrous Victorian house ‘renovation’. I’d made the mistake of running ahead and getting work done only to find weeks down the line that some completed works needed to be dismantled to allow other tasks to be carried out. Of course, asking for advice is a sensible thing to do, but the additional trap I’d fallen into with my Victorian house saga was to accept the advice of the first person I asked without seeking second (or third!) opinions.

The issues of costs and funding were adding pressure to my decision-making process. To delay commencing renovation works would be an expensive exercise. An empty house incurs regular and unavoidable bills. It seemed clear that the earlier I could move into the house and relinquish my existing home, the cheaper the exercise would be.

An image of someone using a calculator and pen and paper to make notes.

However, I remembered just how costly it can be to take the wrong course of action. I sat down and recalculated my budget sheet and factored in a way of taking a little more time. Paying out more for running costs in the short term would protect me from making rushed decisions and reduce the likelihood of making mistakes which could cost me dearly in the longer term.

I took a new sheet of paper and instead of writing a list of the order of works, I carried out research and wrote a list of local tradespeople to consult. I would need a professional and experienced person to advise me about the order in which the renovation should progress. I would listen to the ideas of several people and then consider their suggestions before making any firm decisions.

A Proverb recorded many centuries ago advises: “By consultation, plans will succeed” Those words are as true today as they were when they were first written down. I realised that a calmly paced, thorough consultation process with several contractors and tradespeople had to take place before any firm decisions could be made.

A.P. 1 March 2021

Photo Credit: ID 102350644 © Arturs Budkevics | Dreamstime.com

Back To The Thirties!

Posted on 7th Feb 2021 by amaziliapeacock

That apartment served my family well for many years. I’d yearned to buy and live in a “new build” for such a long time and the experience, when it came, lived up to my expectations.

Suddenly, completely out of the blue, an opportunity arose: the opportunity to go back to living in a nineteen thirties period property, and not just any property but the one where I had grown up. The decision was not a easy one but finally it was made and I had an exciting project ahead of me – a thirties house to renovate, decorate and inhabit!

And so the story of the renovation begins ………….

Back To The Future

Posted on 13th Jan 2021 by amaziliapeacock

My childhood wish to live in a modern house didn’t leave me. In fact, as I moved into my teen years, the desire grew even stronger – fuelled, perhaps, by my mother’s love of viewing “show houses”. Sleek designs, open-plan living, bright colour schemes – they served only to reinforce my conviction that a modern home would be the one for me. In fact, not only did I want a modern house, I wanted a newly built house!

Ripley Village near Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England

During that same time period, though, my parents took me along to see Stately Homes, museums, art galleries and villages which had been built in very particular architectural styles. To give an example; Ripley – a village near Harrogate in Yorkshire, which was modelled on a French village and is quite unlike anything you would expect to see in that county. The village was one of my father’s favourites, and we would visit often. I began to realise that there were facets of historical design which interested me too. My mind was beginning to broaden when it came to the subject of architecture!

When the time arrived for me to buy my first property there were several pressing practical considerations which over-ruled my desire to acquire a “new-build”. Locality and cost being the two major factors. And so my first ever property acquisition was not new, not even modern but Victorian. I never did find out the exact year in which my house was built. However, datestones on terraced blocks to the right and to the left of my own house stated 1868 and 1888 respectively. So we may conclude that my property was constructed somewhere in the middle of Queen Victoria’s reign.

I would love to be able to relate how I lovingly restored that Victorian workers’ cottage and how I painstakingly renovated original features. I wish I could say my home was worthy of an article in “Period Homes” magazine. That I can claim none of those achievements is a source of ongoing regret.

There were few successful moments in that renovation project which I can look back on with satisfaction. Instead, there were a string of poor decisions and errors. When the house was sold and I turned the key for the last time and drove away, I tried not to look in the rear-view mirror – neither literally nor metaphorically.

I was not aware of it at the time, but those lessons learned were going to stand me in good stead for any renovation and decoration projects I would take on in the future. At that moment, however, all I wanted from my next home was that it would be brand, shiny-new!

Terraced Victorian Cottages in a London Suburb

Photo Credits:

Back to the Thirties

Chronicle of a House Renovation

Tag Archives: Renovation