House style

Make your home a haven of natural beauty with the colour of the year

Embrace the shade of 2017: green

I Inherited an avocado bathroom suite in my first (tiny) London flat and couldn’t afford to replace it for several years. What started out as loathing became grudging acceptance, and finally wistful nostalgia when the sludgy green bath, basin and loo were replaced with an inferior plastic suite. It turns out that green can be a wonderfully soothing colour; Pure Brilliant White, not so much.

I mention this because green is having a ‘moment’. Pantone’s colour of the year, Greenery, is a zesty yellow-green that evokes‘ the first days of spring when nature’ s greens revive, restore and renew’. It’s peppy and upbeat but probably best used in small doses. Muted, mossy greens( also very on trend) provide a more restful option for walls– neptune has added a shade called Sage to its paint palette, which works well on kitchen cabinets and wooden furniture.

designers are also bringing the outside in with botanical wallcoverings, textiles and accessories. Fired earth’s nara wallpapers have an exotic star ting point – Japan’s mountainous nara reg ion – and the end result is elegant and restful; a calming soft-green background with a fern-leaf motif.

My favourite product inspired by the great outdoors is the Greenhouse by Bangkok studio atelier 2+. First shown as part of Wallpaper magazine’s annual handmade exhibition in 2014, the nifty idea – a glasshouse designed to house an indoor miniature garden – has been put into production by design house Stockholm.

Made from lacquered ash with panes of toughened glass, the Greenhouse can be placed on a pedestal, allowing it to be used as a free-standing ornament in a room. I think it’s the apotheosis of natural beauty.