InteriorsThe inside track
Why paler hues are back in favour
ONE of the many joys of classic English and American decoration is the clarity of its four fundamental tenets: timeless good looks, comfort, a bit of creativity and nothing that will scare the horses. Stray into more modish genres and you find prevailing tastes being pushed and pulled between maximalism and minimalism in a relentless cycle of revolution and counter-revolution.
Colour plays a big part in the ebb and flow; in turning their backs on the rich palettes favoured by decorators in the 1990s, designers keen to create a pared-back style relied on countless shades of white that were applied not only to walls and furniture, but often to floors as well. In the following decade, colour was back and this time often applied to every element in a room, a practice known as ‘colour drenching’—an easy way to achieve a brilliant quick fix for small, dark rooms where a cosseting atmosphere tends to be the best option. In the hands of fashionable designers, few family sitting rooms (estateagent speak for what we used to call a television room) or gastro pubs escaped a good drenching in black, blue or deep burgundy.
Although they are far too polite to say so, decorators of the old school take a dim view of colour drenching (‘colour what?’ asked one, disingenuously, when I called to canvas her opinion), only occasionally employing it to give a coherent look to panelled rooms, usually in softer colours. Many are also wary of too much white, including Roger Banks-Pye (the late, great totem of 1980s decoration): ‘Although there are moments when white walls might seem a relief, those moments are rare and should be discouraged.’
