Frarrow & Ball Decorating with Colour – Ros Byam Shaw (KTE0024)

Frarrow & Ball Decorating with Colour – Ros Byam Shaw, Contents:  

Introduction

Style & Decoration

CLASSIC

Decorating principle 1: Dark Drama

Decorating principle 2: Ways with Woodwork

Decorating principle 3: Creative Inspiration

Decorating principle 4: Painted Furniture

CONTEMPORARY

Decorating principle 5: Painted Floors

Decorating principle 6: Wonderful Wallpaper

Decorating principle 7: Changing Spaces

COUNTRY

Decorating principle 8: Alfresco Painting

Decorating principle 9: Light Relief

Decorating principle 10: Finishing Touches

Neutral Groupings

Paints, Papers, and More

Picture Credits and Business Credits

Like Downton Abbey and cricket, Savile Row tailoring and roast beef, Farrow & Ball paints and wallpapers are a great British export. Since the original Mr Farrow and Mr Ball began mixing pigment in Dorset in the 1940s, the company has grown to become a global brand. From acorn to oak, while spreading its branches all the way over the ocean to America, and across the channel to mainland Europe, Farrow & Ball has always stayed true to its roots; its products still made in Dorset by craftsmen, still formulated with traditional ingredients, and still bearing memorable names, whether that old favourite ‘Dead Salmon’ or more recent additions such as ‘Charlotte’s Locks’ and ‘Mizzle’.

Frarrow & Ball Decorating with Colour

Having already written a book about houses decorated using Farrow & Ball, I thought I knew their products well and had seen the full range of their decorative effects. As well as writing about their paints, I had used and lived with them myself for the past 25 years. But all the locations featured in the previous book, Farrow & Ball Living with Colour, were English, and travelling for this book to France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Denmark, Norway, and Switzerland to meet designers, architects, and home owners who are fans of Farrow & Ball has been a revelation.

There is immediate recognition of the brand as both British and well established; but the historical or heritage associations that still attach to the colours and designs in their country of origin resonate less strongly. This shift of emphasis means the products are appreciated purely for their quality and the range, depth; and subtlety of their colours, and are used accordingly.

Again and again, I heard praise for the matt, chalky finish of Estate Emulsion and the way it gives colour an almost three-dimensional, sensuous feel. One interior decorator, Eva Gnaedinger; described how a visiting friend had exclaimed that the ‘Shaded White’ on her walls looked so soft that she wanted to lie on it and go to sleep. Equally  appreciated are the colours themselves, which are considered stylish, intriguing, reliably pleasing; and just as appropriate for contemporary schemes and buildings as they are for period ones. In fact, the distinction seems to be almost irrelevant.

Frarrow & Ball Decorating with Colour

A good colour is a good colour, and the fact that it is based on a paint found under later layers in an English stately home; or on the shade of grey of ancient limewash, has no bearing on how you might choose to use it in the 21st century. Marco Lobina, who is a stockist for Farrow & Ball in Turin; and whose taste could not be more uncompromisingly modern, has used paints and wallpapers in a completely original and surprising way that proves definitively how ‘traditional’ colours and patterns can be employed to create interiors that are so fashion-forward that they verge on the futuristic.