4 winning hues for brilliant interiors
ARE you struggling to decide what colours or shades to paint your new home? We have some on-trend suggestions here from a leading interior design expert. Speaking exclusively to MailOnline Property, Sophie Robinson — a regular designer on BBC’s DIY SOS and a former judge on The Great Interior Designer Challenge — picked four winning hues to commemorate New Homes Week.
The colours are from a range of paint suppliers, including Farrow & Ball, Little Green, and Valspar.
Sophie said: “New homes tend to be painted bright white as a blank canvas. But pure white is a design crime as it is too bright in south-facing rooms and too depressing in north-facing rooms.
“You need to get your paint brush out. It can be over-whelming but you have to do it.”
She outlined three steps to help decide what paint colours to use in your new home.
These are looking at the feel of the room you
want to create, how you use that room and when you use the room.
She said: “When I design a room, I need to know whether it is a calm or sociable and energetic area. So a kitchen would have a different feel to a bedroom.
“’How and when you use the room is also important. So you may only use a room only in the evening — such as a master bedroom. I have painted my own bedroom dark blue. And my kitchen, which is north facing, a dark green.”
The colour she selected for a calm room in a new build home is Bone China Blue by Little Green.
She selected Setting Plaster by Farrow & Ball for cosy rooms and Painted Quince by Fired Earth for an uplifting feel.
To help create a dramatic feel to a room, she recommended Puttin’ on the Ritz by Valspar.
Sophie’s recommendations follow a Home Builders Federation survey of 2,055 people by Deltapoll earlier this year, which found that the average spend on improvements when moving home is more than £13,000 (RM69,066).
Claire Coward, of the Home Builders Federation, said: “The blank canvas of a new home and the perfectly plastered, brand new walls make decorating a doddle.
“The average spend on improvements when moving home is £13,472, but with a new build you can just grab a paint brush and add your style for minimum outlay.
“Simply experiment with Sophie’s suggested colours and watch the space transform,” she added.
While many new builds might come with uninspired decor, they do have several other attractions to house buyers, according to research
published recently by property website Zoopla.
A total of 2,000 respondents listed new builds being built to a high quality, energy efficient and their 10-year warranty as some of their most desirable features.
Zoopla’s Laura Howard said: “One of the main draws of was a high-quality build, which would reduce property-related costs and stresses further down the line.
“Energy-efficiency was the second biggest draw of a new-build, perhaps tapping a growing sense of environmental awareness and, of course, also generally costing less in household bills,” she said.
Simply experiment with Sophie’s suggested colours and watch the space transform. CLAIRE COWARD
Home Builders Federation