How to Create a Whole House Colour Scheme

Follow Abi's tips on how to figure out your palette and carry it through your home for a cohesive and stylish pad. 

Follow Abi's tips on how to figure out your palette and carry it through your home for a cohesive and stylish pad. 

Have You Seen The New Abigail Ahern Paint Collection?

We've had a colour makeover and we're taking it to the next level, inspired by and in celebration of our beautiful landscape. We’ve obsessed over creating a cosy cocooning colour palette in which to unwind. Imbued in natural warmth these luxurious hues are perfect for fostering an environment you never want to leave. 

Have You Seen The New Abigail Ahern Paint Collection?

We've had a colour makeover and we're taking it to the next level, inspired by and in celebration of our beautiful landscape. We’ve obsessed over creating a cosy cocooning colour palette in which to unwind. Imbued in natural warmth these luxurious hues are perfect for fostering an environment you never want to leave. 

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Stories, Notations, Discoveries

 

How to Create a Cohesive Colour Palette

Creating a cohesive colour palette throughout your home is such an important decorative tool. While it’s important for each room to have to its own personality for diversity, continuity and flow are incredibly important. Our beautiful collection of muted earthy tones, from mid to swampy and dark have all been designed to work alongside each other.

Our earthy, muted soft colours have all been designed to coordinate harmoniously together. From swampy hues and summery grasslands, to winter forests and even the colour of the earth after a downpour, these hues have all been inspired by nurturing landscapes. Blurring the lines between inside and out these stunning hues offer up a beautiful combination of colours that provide a sense of warmth, comfort and security.

Our earthy, muted soft colours have all been designed to coordinate harmoniously together. From swampy hues and summery grasslands, to winter forests and even the colour of the earth after a downpour, these hues have all been inspired by nurturing landscapes. Blurring the lines between inside and out these stunning hues offer up a beautiful combination of colours that provide a sense of warmth, comfort and security.

Choose the room that you frequent the most as a start point for your whole house scheme.

Create a mood board

Pick a Family of Colours

We generally advise between 4-6 colours throughout the whole house no matter how many rooms you have. Add in graduated tones in different strengths as this will provide you with a seamless colour journey from room to room. For example Abigail has used around 6 different colours in her pad and layered in both neutral tones and accessories with some inkier darker pieces which ground the whole palette and make it feel super sophisticated.

Create a Visual Link

When you link hallways and landings and powder rooms, clock rooms and mud rooms into your whole house colour scheme, you will create such a beautiful harmonious thread of hues that will have a fabulously cohesive feel. Every room will flow continuously which is what the world’s coolest interior designers routinely do.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Do you know your emulsion from your eggshell and have you ever thought about having a feature wall? We've popped some of our most common questions about painting a room below. Happy decorating. 

What's the difference between Emulsion and Eggshell?

Emulsion is a flat matte paint with no sheen and should be used to paint your walls and ceilings. Eggshell has a slight sheen but is more durable, so it should be used to paint all of your trims including window frames, skirting boards, door frames and radiators. Eggshell can be used on walls too. It's perfect for high traffic areas like hallways and bathrooms and can add a contrasting design element to your scheme if you want to create extra intrigue with textures especially when you use the same hue. 

Why should I paint my walls and ceiling the same colour?

When you paint the ceiling out in the same colour as your walls you blur the boundaries and the room feels bigger and creates a seamless transition. If you have a white ceiling you accentuate the boundaries and quite often the lack of height in a room. Pushing the same colour around your whole room creates the perfect backdrop for the rest of your furniture, rugs and accessories. If you are not ready to take the full plunge into colour drenching your whole room, consider painting your ceiling in a slightly lighter tone to your walls, a white ceiling only ever looks good with white walls (if you like that kind of thing of course)!

Should I paint my radiator?

It's the AA way to always paint the radiator the same colour as the walls. If your walls are broken up by a big white blob, your eye will automatically be drawn to that and not your beautiful interior space. There are a few exceptions whereby some radiators have a designer look and may already be a cool colour that complements your scheme, but in general they need to be disguised not highlighted.   

How should I test paint colours?

Always buy sample pots before you decide on your colour palette and make your decision after you’ve painted the largest area you can. Swatch cards are too generally small to provide a good enough reference point so you need to take the plunge and paint a wall or at least half a wall. If this is not a favourable option for you, then paint the largest sample you can on a large piece of card or lining paper (which is relatively cheap). Tape it to your wall and make sure you look at your sample throughout the day to see how it looks and feels when the light changes. It helps to keep it there for several days/weeks to really get the feel of your considered hue. 

Are feature walls a good idea?

The interior design world can be very snooty about feature walls, and while I prefer to paint out my whole space in one colour, I'm not totally adverse to championing this 90's trend. Feature walls are a good way to add contrast and personality but you just need to ensure that you echo the same hues in the rest of your room by way of accessories or soft furnishings such as cushions or throws to create a cohesive feel. That way you will create a feature wall that not only looks amazing but makes sense within your space as whole. 

What's your best piece of decorating advice?

People don’t often decorate in a cool fashion because they are scared they will fail. Don’t be scared and face the fear of making mistakes, it will guide you on all sorts of incredible journeys. When you decorate differently and break boundaries, it becomes addictive. It’s easy to play it safe, but the trouble with taking the safe route is that it doesn’t allow you to inject personality into your home. Just remember to take it slow. Decorating isn't like fashion, you can’t simply take back a kitchen because you don’t like it, so don’t rush into things, take your time and enjoy the journey.

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