As we mentioned in an earlier blog, Paint Library create some fantastic colours – we use them ourselves. They have one of the biggest and most popular range of colours on the market today. Yet they are always incredibly inventive and cutting edge.
2013 sees Paint Library introduce some new colours.
Their best selling Architectural Range has been bolstered with the addition of Canvas, Cotton, Felt and Salt. If you remember these are the ones that they number I to V, V being the darkest tone and if you chose different numbers within the range they are guaranteed to match. So say Salt II for the walls and Salt IV for the skirting boards and the rest of the wood.
The Architectural Range from Paint Library therefore makes selecting colours schemes that match – easy.
What about some of the new colours.
It took us a wee while to work out what the BTWN of BTWN Dog & Wolf meant but it turns out it means “between”. So it’s a colour that is somewhere between a Dog and a Wolf. Still not necessarily any wiser about the naming of this one.
Further research revealed that there was a South Korean, action/rom-com drama series from 2007 called “The Time Between Dog and Wolf” – which never aired in the UK just in South Korea. It’s possible that Paint Library have drawn inspiration from this. But it’s a bit unlikely.
Then we had a break through. It turns out the series took it’s unusual name from a French saying “L’heure entre chien et loup” – and this refers to the time immediately after sunset when everything grows dark and the eye struggles to distinguish between a dog or a wolf, a friend or a foe. That’s it then because this colour is indeed a dark, smouldering grey, black – just like the sky after the sun has gone for the day.
It’s a risky colour – but we saw a lot of greys being used last year and they looked fabulous, just check out our Pinterest Board – Have a Great Grey if you don’t believe us. The combinations are stunning and prompted the hashtag #GreyDoesNotEqualDull .
Mystery solved but we also have a few others to take a look at.
Sea Biscuit – the colours of the famous horse or a rich tea finger. Well this fawn colour is more horse than dunkable snack. And there is a also a wonderful, fresh green paint called Final Furlong and another called Joint Favourite – so we’re sensing a horse racing fan amongst the colour designers at Paint Library.
Acqua Viva – there are parts of Italy that have the prefix Acquaviva, but then there are also composers, DJs and writers with that as a surname. It’s an almost black shade – so we’re struggling to see any link there. Stumped.
Finally of this small selection of the new colours (there are many more) Tallanstown Grey. Well that would sound like its grey but its more a green, olive khaki colour. Tallanstown is a small Irish village just south of the border with Northern Ireland – so you have the Emerald Isle link. It’s a beautiful colour whatever the inspiration.
In all there are 240 different colours available from Paint Library that we can supply. All of them basically. And they are fascinating to browse through. Perhaps you too can spend some time trying to work out where the names have come from (Picadilly Pig?!?) – it’s actually pretty good fun. And you’ll have a tale to tell your friends.
Happy decorating!
We think we are stockists of the best paints available in the UK. That’s why we use them ourselves. But we would say that wouldn’t we. But to prove it – this weekend we
The walls were House White by Farrow & Ball
redecorated our living room using Paint & Paper Library’s Stone II.
You may remember from an earlier blog post we explained that Paint Library number many of their paints e.g. Stone I, Stone II through to Stone V. Stone V being the darkest paint in the set. You can combine any of these paints and they will be sure to match.
For our living room we chose Stone II Flat Emulsion for the walls and we’ll be using Stone IV or V for the woodwork.Their flat emulsion gives virtually no sheen – which is what we wanted.
A 2.5 litre tin costs £35 – but you pay for what you get. Firstly we didn’t think it would be enough to do all the walls and we thought we’d need two coats. We were wrong on both counts. One coat and we still had about a 1/4 of a tin left for the future. It’s definitely worth paying a bit more because premium, designer paints are worth it and Paint Library is a dream to use with a brush or a roller.
We started on Saturday morning by clearing out the room, dusting everywhere and making good any holes. It was lovely and sunny – but by the time we started to actually paint the sun had gone, the clouds came over and down came the hail making it quite dark.
We persevered with the cutting in and then started rolling the walls. We’d done three out of the four by the time it became too dark to see. So we finished off the final wall on Sunday morning.
The room looks great – it’s difficult to see from the pics but Stone II is a classy colour bringing light into the room – perfect for us because our house has small cottage windows.
We’re really happy with the result. We’ve basically managed to re paint all the walls for £35. Plus the costs of tea bags and fig rolls which was not inconsiderable.
2.5 litre tin from Paint Library
The walls as they were
For the cutting in
Decorating action - cutting in
Having a break
Job done
Plenty left!
No sheen
The Paint Library
David Oliver the Creative Director at the Paint and Paper Library describes the colours he creates as practical, confident, considered and edited.
It was the last one we struggled with but on closer investigation what he is referring to is that many of the colours from Paint Library are architectural and original colours designed for historical, traditional and contemporary homes. He goes on to describe the Original Colours as having a personality to match any room and any style.
The Architectural Range is cleverly numbered to help with matching. All the colours are close tones of off white or neutral and each is numbered I, II, III, IV or V – where I is the lightest e.g. Stone I and V is the boldest or strongest e.g. Stone V. This system makes it easy to match colours within the same room or from room to room and is particularly good for painting architectural features like alcoves or cornices.
This is a great system because as David rightly says “Understanding how colours behave is one of the most difficult aspects of decoration to get right. It has as much to do with light as pigment and often, neither is constant.”
You need to consider not just the amount of light in a room, but the direction of that light – be it natural or artificial. In addition consider the size and purpose of the room.
At the end of the day, David says “Use your natural intuition to instinctively pick colours that personally look right and are comfortable for you.”
We so many ways of decorating a room, we think this is good advice from the Paint Library who like Farrow and Ball also suggest there are some “standard styles” for painting a room. Farrow and Ball suggested four styles, Paint Library limit it to three.
Paint Library - Colours
Contrasting and Traditional where there are coloured walls and lighter woodwork e.g. Slate IV for the walls and Slate II for the woodwork. The folk at Paint Library refer to this as a related style and is great for continuity through a suite of rooms.
Strong and Classic uses the same principle but is bolder with lighter woodwork and strong wall colours for example Slate I and Slate V. This contrasting style is often created by combining Paint Library Tea Tree & Wattle V, or Trilogy & Rita Says.
Finally create a Clean and Contemporary style by using the same colours throughout the room. The Paint Library also refer to this style as monochromatic and site Stone, Slate and Sand as some of there most popular paints for this style of decorating.
Not everyone has an interior designer on hand to help them choose their paint colours and colours combinations – so we think the numbering system of the Paint Library and their suggested styles is a really useful guide to help you create stunning paint combinations for any room.
But remember to use your intuition! It’s your room after all.
All colours from the Paint Library can be found in our online store – head over there to browse and buy online.
Happy decorating!
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