Your favourite paint colours/wallpaper ...inspiration thread.

[FriggFRIGG]

What are your favourite paint colours? Or wallpapers?
For which rooms?

We are going to be redecorating our new house,we've never owned before so this is our first foray,I'm very excited,and very nervous!

So any inspiration happily accepted,but just I case you want to know,

We have quite eclectic taste,DP likes bright things,I prefer dark wood and art deco stuff...
The house is a victorian terrace 3 beds,(one is an attic room with two velux) dining room,living room(both have fire places)
We have a 3year old DD and a 17 month old DS,DD will be in the attic room.

The (galley) kitchen is fine,we'll leave that,the rest are okay,but we want to do them IYSWIM.

So,favorites,what you've just used,what's out,what's in,what will look awful,unexpected lovelyness?!

[mumblejumble]

Oooh how exciting
I love this www.firedearth.com/wallpaper/range/alhambra-palace/winter-20186

[kitsmummy]

Hi, I love most farrow and ball colours (have used and loved String, Cornforth White, Elephants breath amongst others) so love that whole look.

Am just about to go wild though and paper our bedroom (all the way round, not a feature wall) in this actually is a black background and the pinks are more muted irl and will put Art Deco style accessories (light fitting and wall mirror).

Previously had a tiny understairs toilet in a beautiful sort of dark turquoise jewel type colour with fired earth mosquito tiles (with a dot of the turquoise blue in them) above the basin. This was a tiny room in very strong colours but looked really gorgeous.

Have just done DD's room in a copy of a discontinued F&B Powder Blue - so have steered away from the typical girly pink and it looks fab!

If you're after a F&B type sludgey colour I can really recommend Albany Traditions paint in Lympstone (From Brewers trade paint shop). Used this in DS room and looks great.

My friend has used F&B Shaded White in a lot of her house - very neutral but looks really nice.

[kitsmummy]

Oh mumble, I love that wallpaper!

[ILoveAFullFridge]

We like feature walls, though not necessarily eye-car h

[ILoveAFullFridge]

(Let's try again.)

We like feature walls, though we haven't done any particularly eye-catching ones - yet!

Ds's room is small, but very sunny, and it is papered in a dull, almost silvery green, with one rich purple wall. The curtains are dark scarlet (his choice). Dd's room is large, but NW-facing, so gets very little sunlight. It is papered in a silvery lilac, with one warm yellow wall. The curtains are shimmery purple. In both cases we wanted decorations that were fairly simple and neutral, that they wouldn't outgrow, and that they could 'accessorise' according to their ages and tastes.

In general we find that we tend to decorate rooms with very little direct sunlight (eg internal hallways or north-facing) in warm shades of yellow, either paper or paint. I know yellow is not to everyone's taste, but it's cosy and bright.

We like wood, and most of our furniture is wood. (I don't like stripped doors, as generally they were not made with the intention of showing the wood. Doors made to be bare wood are a different matter.) We find that wooden furniture shows up beautifully against plain-coloured walls without fussy patterns, and so manage to satisfy both our likings for brightness and for natural wood.

[FriggFRIGG]

Ooh,some good ideas!

I LOVE that wallpaper mumble!

We have a lot of dark wood,including a piano,that will be quite big in the room,the only place it'll fit is the living room and it will dominate the space a bit,so any advice on that room in particular would be good,our sofa is dark reddish.. It has a fireplace,and will also have the tv in....I'm stumped on it

[CaptainWentworth]

I will be watching this thread with interest, as we have also just bought our first house. It was built in 1902 so is probably a similar style to FriggFRIGG's. We have a PINK bedroom and a BLUE bedroom which I am keen to paint over!

Can I hijack a bit and ask about plug sockets/light switches? We are about to have a rewire (electrics last attended to in 1970-something) and I want our new sockets to look as good as possible. Are we best just sticking to basic white plastic? Most of the existing ones cracked, yellowing and in the skirting board!

[FriggFRIGG]

Hello captain....I have NO idea about the plug sockets / light switches...ours was re wired 4 years ago thank god so we don't have to do that...but ours are a sort of Matte chrome,which I quite like.

One of our bedrooms is pink to...it's going to be DS's room,so that needs doing...our room is dark purple,with BLACK painted floorboards!

I'm so excited,I can't wait to get going on it!
We're hoping for a lap over of a week or so with our rental place so we can decorate before moving in...

[PeskyPiskie]

I have just done my sitting room, Victorian semi-detatched, in this wall paper. It looks very dramatic, but not too dark. I think a feature wall is a good compromise if you think that a whole room wallpapered would be too much.

[mathanxiety]

I normally don't like wallpaper but recently I have come to the conclusion that vintage patterns can be nice (though expensive). Here is Squirrel and Dove' maybe nice for a child's room? I like the Arts and Crafts style maybe some ideas here? I have seen some of these in a friend's house and they are lovely; it's a turn of the century house and she has furniture that goes with the style. For a room with dark wood, a dark red couch and a large piano the Edwardian / Arts and Crafts look might suit. The Gold colour in the Iona range might be nice for the sitting room? (the 'Bowmore' range there is nice too, imo - a bit more dramatic than backgroundey. Would your DS like 'Fin and Tentacle'?

I don't like feature walls unless they add a sense of spaciousness to a small room. I tend to like deeper/warmer colours I grew up in an off-white house and have sort of rebelled against that. A deep gold colour might be nice for the piano room too, but be careful with yellows and golds sample and see what the light does to it. Some golds and yellows can turn out to have a grey or pink or green tone as the light changes through the day.

[HappyAsEyeAm]

We had a Victorian house before this one, and I had Parchment by Crown matt emulsion in the living room. Neutral, but with a bit of depth to it - I really liked it, and lots of friends with similar age houses liked it and used it then too.

Laura Ashley Twine matt emulsion is a favourite of mine too - much more depth than Parchment, and especially nice in a sunny room.