Colour livens up any house & makes it home

Changing Room gang

Seeing the Changing Rooms cast back for a new series made me remember all the decor I once loved and now could not stomach.

It took me and Colin a while to decorate and furnish our house after we moved in 40 years ago. Colin insisted we didn’t buy anything on HP, so for a while all we had were four deck chairs. Then my dad offered a lady a few bob for her old hide suite and I loved it. And I saved up cigarette coupons for a lobster pot stool.

Paint was expensive, but we were quite go-ahead with our colours. We had a mustard kitchen, blue-grass walls in the hall – more colours than Joseph’s dreamcoat.

MUSTARD

We were the first in the close to have a coloured ceiling. We painted our living room walls pale peppermint green and the ceiling the pink you’d get if you mixed raspberries with carnation cream. Anyone who saw it said: “We wouldn’t have done it, but it isn’t half effective”. I was the one living with it and I liked it, so to anyone who didn’t – tough.

My M sons had blue painted walls, but there were so many pin holes and Blu Tack blobs from all their football foot posters we had to put up wallpaper wall and emulsion over it.

All A decorating ideas came from our own minds, because with two small sma boys I didn’t have time to read magazines and it was decades deca before Instagram. These days everyone’s interiors look the same, and as soon as people move mov in they have all sorts of beautiful beau furniture right away.

Now N my house is almost all magnolia. mag But as garishly coloured colo as they were, I think I preferred pref the old days.