THE SUNDAY TIMES - MAY 5, 2002

Bland walls get the brush-off
Can't decide what colours to use inside your home? Calling in a colourist could be a good investment, says Zoe Brennan

Coming out of your local DIY shop clutching a rainbowed sheath of cards, you realise that choosing the décor for your house is no simple task. Time was, you could tell your decorator to paint a room white. Now they will ask which shade you require — linen, stone, off-white, chaste or chalk.
Faced with a baffling choice of colours and 10 rooms to paint next week, I found an easier solution than daubing walls with the contents of expensive sample tins. Enter my colourist — David Oliver from the Paint & Paper Library in London. It might sound grand, but Oliver will take the stress out of choosing a colour scheme for £117.50 an hour. Compare that with the average £250 cost of having one room repainted and his fee seems almost a bargain.
Oliver immediately turned most of my ideas regarding colour on their head. "You should paint light rooms light colours, and dark ones dark," he says. "Don't try to beat nature."
For rooms you will use mainly in the evening, he recommends stronger colours such as deep greens and warm terracottas. "Go for eggshell finishes rather than matt in evening rooms," he says. "They have a reflective quality that makes rooms more welcoming in electric light." For bright day rooms, he advises paler neutral shades in matt emulsion.
For our first-floor reception room with its high ceilings, he suggests a "warm neutral", such as Clay from his Architectural Colours range. "I don't believe in slavish adherence to historical colours," he explains. "But you want to follow the design principles of the Georgians in a Georgian house."
He recommends creating a gradient from ceiling to floor, to enhance the proportions of the room, with ceilings painted the lightest shade, followed by cornice and frieze, then wall, with skirting board the darkest element.
"Having the darkest colours at the bottom creates a natural shadow-line down the room," he says. "It is a common mistake to paint the cornice the same shade as the ceiling." In rooms with low ceilings, Oliver advises painting them brilliant white, and keeping walls dark and flooring light to create a "heightening" effect.
Moving to the bedroom, Oliver swiftly overrules my husband, Jonathan, who has a notion that brilliant white is the colour for sleeping, inducing a mind-clearing "Zen" effect. "Absolutely not," says Oliver. "Mushroom tones or muted pastels are conducive to sleep. You want a colour that relaxes at night, yet works when you open the curtains in the morning." He suggests Quench the Gloom, a powder grey/green; Tea Tree, "An old-fashioned pink"; or Newlands, "A pale lilac with shades of black". To Jonathan's horror, he also suggests painting the woodwork a metallic silver to "make it pretty". After negotiation, he allows us Newlands for the walls and Lead II, a charcoal colour, for the woodwork.
The current fashion is for strong, sporty colours such as blues and aubergines, mixed with neutrals, says Oliver. He has also seen an increase in the use of different textures: "People are starting to mix eggshells with flat emulsion, and metallic paints with chalky-finish products," he says. Highlighting features in different colours against a paler shade is very "now": a deep colour in an alcove, for instance, against a backdrop of duck egg or cream.
Looking at the breakfast room, which leads on to the smaller, darker kitchen, he suggests using two shades of the same colour — the darker Stone IV for the kitchen, and the lighter Stone III in the bright front room. "This creates harmony," he says. "The two rooms will look the same colour because the tones will iron out the light difference."
Oliver also recommends a bold approach for basement rooms. "Go for stronger colours in small rooms," he says. "Contrary to what most people would think, they work best there — creating a library-like intimacy." For Jonathan's office, he recommends "something masculine and bookish like Iona Marble — which is a putty shade. Choose earthy, dark, nocturnal shades. Paint window surrounds a lighter colour to look as if light is flooding in."
For the baby's room: "Go for durable acrylic eggshell paints in cheerful colours." Then all that remained was the hall. "It's fundamental and the most difficult part to get right," he says. During his colour consultations, he chops up the colour cards he has used for the rest of the house and lays them out on a floor plan to find one colour that will work with each room, providing a link between them.
"The hall is the biggest mistake you could make as it's the largest expanse of paint and therefore the most expensive to redo," he says. For us, he suggests the plaster pink Roben's Honour, or the beige shoredust. When I tell him that some of his choices are too sophisticated, he sighs and confesses that his best-selling colour is still off-white.
According to Ed Mead, a director of Douglas & Gordon estate agents, dramatic colour schemes can cost you up to 10% off the value of your home. "I have a £1.5m three-bedroom flat next to Harrods on the market that is painted in the loudest lime greens and primary reds," he says. "Buyers just think, 'Christ, I'm going to have to redecorate this'." Mead has suggested to the German owners that they re-paint in brilliant white. "It might not be exciting, but if you want to sell, it is best to go for whites."

David Oliver at the Paint & Paper Library, 020 7823 7755