London: a Riot of Colour

I have to admit to not quite knowing where to start with today’s post. I spent last week in London, a city that never fails to blow my mind, and last week was no exception. It was of course in the throws of London Fashion Week and the The Brit Awards which meant that the shop windows were groomed and styled to perfection.

Strong colour trends were clearly visible throughout London. Blocks of coral crashing into great chunks of Klein blue and 70′s purples anchored by spicy tans and cinnamon hues – tribal colours without the pattern, instead emerging in great blocky geometric shapes.

As if I needed any more colour stimulus, I made a trip to the David Hockney exhibition ‘A Bigger Picture’. Suddenly you find yourself looking at the English countryside though a new set of eyes. To say the exhibition is vibrant, energetic, zesty would somehow be an understatement. This huge exhibition positively bursts off the walls of the Royal Academy with a ramped up sense of optimism and freshness. I would strongly recommend you to watch Andrew Marr’s interview with David Hockney on last nights The Culture Show - so much can be learnt from the mind of this artistic genius. As Hockney says, ‘everything becomes interesting if you really look’, I couldn’t agree more.

looking at patterns and exaggerating colour in Fife

Space is something David Hockney often talks of, particularly where one thing stops and another thing starts. Where two colours meet is something I am intensely interested in as the energy created at the boundaries of adjoining colours is the perfect fusion of art and science. But infinite space is one of  Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s enduring obsessions.  Her show at Tate Modern is one of the most fascinating exhibitions I have ever seen.

It shows her work constantly changing over the decades which probably mirrors her life which includes living in rural Japan, New York, Tokyo and for the last thirty years living voluntarily in a  psychiatric institution where she has created work hoping to show the psychological trauma she so often feels and wants to escape from. Leaving the exhibition you must navigate through a darkened room covered in mirrors and tiny coloured lights which completely disorientate you and seem to stretch out to infinity. It really is something you should experience if you are in London.

Apologies for the lack of photographs on this post but I couldn’t take my camera into the exhibitions. I’ve also been very busy creating some new products – I’m still at the messy stage but I am really pleased with the pieces that I started in Iceland last month.  I hope to have images up soon!

Made in Britain

How important is it to you to buy products which have been grown or manufactured in your own country? Surely it’s a good way to get people back to work, instil some national pride and cut down on our carbon foot print?

Earlier this year I decided to produce a range of home wares and I was determined to design and manufacture them here in Great Britain. The first designs are a set of kitchen textiles which I think have architectural overtones. I am well aware that the market is awash with decorative kitchen textiles but I was keen to produce something for the contemporary kitchen – my designs can’t be described as pretty, and a friend actually thought they were quite masculine but I was pleased with that, it’s what I intended!

The designs are all screen printed – a long process but the best process for obtaining vibrant colours and colours that stay truer for longer. Digital printing is fine for some things but as it’s strong flat colour that interests me, screen printing was the answer (all the inks are water based causing minimal environmental impact). I decided to print onto linen union because the texture and slubs you find on linen gives the product more character.

So, they are designed and printed in Great Britain (including the brand label which has been woven) but I have paid the cost of taking this route. I hope it works out (I could have had them printed abroad for a fraction of the cost) but it gives me immense satisfaction having them produced here in Great Britain – I hope it is important to buyers too. I thought it was interesting to see that a new Made in UK  logo is set to appear in our shops next year.

My retailers would prefer me not to display the textiles until they have the stock (by the end of the month) which is why I have only inserted a tiny image of my proofs above.

Below are some of the reasons why I like living and working in Scotland. Where do you live and why?

Choosing External Paint Colours

It struck me that the majority of my posts have been concerned with colours for interiors but of course external colour selection is something I spend a lot of time considering.

I really enjoy selecting colours for commercial shop fronts as studies have shown that certain colours can actually drive more customers through a door. Being able to evaluate the effect of a colour with statistics is a really different way of looking at colour choice and obviously an important one for a business owner.

Position of colour on a building also plays a pivotal role. It is usually more pleasing to have “heavier”(darker) colours closer to the ground and lighter colours above as it helps to “ground” a building and in turn feels easier on the eye. This is normally referred to as “architectural order”. Reverse this and you have “typographical order” – like newspapers which use heavier colours at the top of a page in order to create a banner.

However, you will see some shops displaying typographical order as they may want to create a brand “banner” above the entrance.

And then of course you must look at colour association. It’s no coincidence that many fine wine shop fronts are painted red,

red wine colour

travel agents azure blue,

sea and sky blue

organic food shops green,

environmentally aware green

 spas violet,

purple, regal and spiritual

and this delicate bridal shop,

shell pink oozing femininity

However, a recent client, a farmer, commissioned Shepherd Huts to be hand built by Plankbridge ,a wonderful artisan company based in Dorset. The idea is that she will disperse the huts throughout a forested piece of land on her farm and will rent them out to holiday makers. She was really keen to choose colours for her shepherd huts that would meld into the natural environment – not to be camouflaged as the huts are beautiful but they had to related to the natural colours in the trees around them. On occasions like this, the best way to start is to analyse the existing colours in the immediate surroundings. I am always amazed how often violet grey pops up – a fantastically useful subtle and delicate colour in decoration and one which pairs so well with many other colours.

silver birch bark - Scotland

palm tree bark - Lisbon

plane tree bark - France

So next time you find yourself out shopping or taking a holiday in a Shepherds Hut (!) take a moment to look at the colours – there is often an interesting process behind the selection.

Two Summer Colours to Keep

As I sit here at 55 latitude, I have to report that summer has definitely vanished. The shops are filling up with heavy textiles and the colour palettes are rapidly changing.

However, it is still August, so I thought I would pin up some summery palettes and interestingly each image contains one colour that is going to hang on well into Winter 2011.

Sulphurous yellow is likely to be a key micro colour this winter. Used for details to lift a moody room, or on the catwalk to make fun of  grown up tailoring, its presence even on very small areas will be felt.

Inky midnight blue is another colour I think we will see but this time on larger areas. Not a conventional navy, more a bruised navy heading towards off-black. A great backdrop for artwork and a colour that can easily add sophisticated drama to an interior. Farrow & Ball’s Hague Blue fits the bill but if you are looking for less saturation, Paint & Paper Library’s Blue Blood is a stylish “easy on the eyes” blue. Little Greene’s Juniper Ash  a hazy airforce blue-grey  would be a softer choice while Valtti ”St.Peter’s Boat” a powerful blue-black would create an interesting feature wall.

Put the two colours together and you have a great combination – perhaps it’s not so bad we are marching towards Autumn……

The Hues of Decay

For a paint consultant to love peeling, flaky, rusty decayed surfaces is a bit of an anomaly but I do confess I am totally drawn to such weathered features. I have tried to figure out why this should be so, surely I should be seeking out squeaky clean well maintained pristine examples of paint but no, it’s definitely the ones “in need of attention” that catch my eye.

Of course the reason I and so many others are attracted to these surfaces is because they have created their own unique colour palettes – salt, oxygen, water, pollutants, resins all acting together in an open air chemistry lab to produce a vast selection of colours that we paint consultants can match and use in projects – but generally replicate on smooth and perfect surfaces……

It’s high time I thanked my subscribers for reading and commenting on my blog – you’ve no idea how much I appreciate it. I would also like to point out that I got quite a shock yesterday when I saw my blog on a pc. I work on a mac so the colours I am looking at are much lighter and brighter than the colours on a pc. This is rather an issue as most of the time as you know, I write about colour. It would be interesting to know how many of you are pc users. If it’s a lot, I will try to lighten up my images, just let me know. I also hope you don’t find my way of spelling colour too irritating –  I know most of my readers are American and Canadian, again just let me know!

Blue Horizon

Having spent the last two days walking round Scotland’s North East Fife Coast I am now flicking through my rather enormous collection of photographs from the trip and clearly see why analogous colour schemes are often referred to as harmonious.

Analogous palettes normally consist of three adjacent colours on the colour wheel. The middle colour is chosen as the lead or dominant colour in a scheme while the others take on more of a supporting role.

If you look at combinations of colours in nature, particularly landscapes, you will notice they are frequently analogous which is why they look and feel harmonious to us – useful to know if you want to create a calm and serene room with little contrast and a seamless feel. It’s also a good way of simplifying an awkwardly shaped room.

Classic and Cool

The signal has been made. It’s official. It is blue and white season. It takes the place of vibrant spring greens and citrus yellows. It happens every year without fail and is actually the only truly timeless combination I can think of. It’s not a trend it’s a national treasure.

So versatile you will see it in classical interiors as well as ultra-hip hotels. It was popular in Britain as early as 1750 to decorate pottery. It’s fresh, it’s cool and it’s classic.

Shop windows are stuffed with blue and white combos – clothes and home wares, and not many of us can resist. Perhaps it allows us to shake off the last of that winter feeling or dream of summers on Greek islands or picket fences in Maine.

Whether you paint your floor boards white or spray some old wicker furniture blue, it’s a budget combo that won’t let you down whatever decade we are in.

Colour Notation: the Key to Describing Colour

Considering we can see approximately 10 million colours but only have eleven non- ambiguous names for them – white, black, grey, yellow, red, blue, green, brown, pink, orange and purple, it’s obvious we need a system to accurately describe what we see. Systems such as the German Ral, American Pantone and British Standard (BS) are all widely used to specify colour but the Scandinavian system NCS (Natural Colour System) I find the most logical  by far. When looking at an NCS notation, you can actually visualise the colour (without a key or fan), a very useful trick which I have not come across in any other system.

I’m looking for a blue that reminds me of this magnificent blue sky – a colour I found quickly in the NCS fan because I knew it was a blue with a touch of red (ie purplish blue) rather than a blue heading towards green.

S2060-R80B fits the bill perfectly. I shall briefly explain this notation to you.  ”2060” refers to the nuance. The “20” tells me there is 20% blackness (perceived amount of blackness relative to pure black), the “60” tells me there is 60% chromaticness (saturation of hue). R80B tells me the degree of resemblance between red (R) and blue (B) in my colour. I can see that it’s red with 80% blueness and 20% redness.

NCS also have a fantastic colour picking tool which is free to download – one word of warning though – as it includes an excellent space to create palettes you may find that’s your day gone….

Thin Blue Line

I am working on a very calm, quiet interior scheme today but it is looking slightly flat and  grounded. It’s needing a lift, a dynamic burst of colour to give some energy to the room.

When a project is missing an edge, I take a walk – it’s the perfect antidote. Whether it’s an urban stomp or a meander on a beach, it never fails to reveal a combination of colours that gets the project back on track.

Colour Proportion

I’ve spent some time looking at  Goethe‘s thoughts on colour value and found his theories of great help in colour placement. He stated that white and warm hues have greater strength than black and cool hues. For example, orange is twice as strong as blue and therefore an artist should use twice as much blue as orange in order to balance the relative strengths.

Balancing colours often comes instinctively to us so when you look around at images and patterns you find pleasing, you will often find they show colour harmony.

Goethe also paid particular attention to complementary colours – balancing colours to achieve a visual harmony. Our brains constantly seek colour balance so here the orange ladder (a small proportion relative to the blue of the sky) is satisfying our need to see blues’s complementary, orange.