Joa Studholme’s job title at paint company Farrow & Ball is “colour curator”, which makes her sound like a hipster doing something groovy and opaque, or a rare breed of fine art specialist. In practice, she is something altogether more down-to-earth: a paint and colour consultant with a large dollop of Mary Poppins empathy, pragmatism and cheeriness mixed in for good measure.
Over the past 25 years, Studholme has parachuted into upwards of 4,000 homes to advise daunted newbies, or fraught couples, on their colour schemes. “They don’t know where to begin,” she says, as we sit in the bay window of her partially decorated new flat in London’s Notting Hill. The walls and woodwork, including the shutters, are painted in Dead Salmon in a dead flat finish. “Or there’s a marital issue,” she continues, invariably over the choice of palette. One half hankering after something daring and fun, the other wanting safe neutrals frequently results in complete deadlock.
“Everyone is embracing colour much more,” says Studholme. “All those years of grey mania are over. I used to drift around houses around Notting Hill and they were all pretty much identical – seas of marble and shades of greige – absolutely beautiful, of course, but also very soulless. Now people have realised that their homes have to work so much harder for them. You’d be amazed how many want to have womb-like, cocoon-like bedrooms.”
The question is, which colours and where? Studholme, together with Farrow & Ball’s creative director Charlotte Cosby, has written How to Redecorate to talk people through the process, step by step. “It’s a manual on decorating, not a glossy coffee table book,” Studholme says. “The idea is to go through it sequentially.” The first steps are the crucial ones: skip them and you’ll end up back where you started, feeling overwhelmed and unable to make decisions. If you do things in the right order, and break down both the process and the project before you begin, you can’t fail, she enthuses, with characteristic passion.
Step one: take on board the architecture of the room you want to redecorate. Is it large or small, dark or light? Is it an awkward shape? Step two: bear in mind how the light falls in a room, as this will determine how your paint colours change during the course of the day. Step three, and this pertains to a single-room project or a whole house or flat: be guided by your own style and how you live – follow your gut instinct.
A penchant for colour brings new choices, she says, with woodwork a key consideration. “Ask yourself: are you wedded to white woodwork? Have you thought about dark? Most people are, like: ‘That’s a bit scary, I’ve never thought of it.’” The advantage of trim that is darker than the walls, she says, is that it makes a space seem lighter, while using the same colour on both walls and trim makes the space feel bigger and sleeker.
If you want to change things up, there’s no need to redecorate your entire home. “Start small,” says Studholme, “with the inside of a cupboard or a loo.” This gives you a chance to find out how comfortable you are with bolder choices.
If you want the wow factor, but not in the whole house, do something darker or bold in the hall. “A statement hall gives you licence to be much more neutral in the rooms leading off it.” The spare room is another chance at self-expression. “If you have the indulgence of an extra room, go for a colour which perhaps you wouldn’t want to live with every day. I’m all over doing really strong colours and crazy decoration in guest rooms. Why not give your guests a treat?”
Another good trick to add pizzazz is to paint the edge of one or two doors in a strikingly different colour. Put a strip of masking tape on the edge of the door, then paint it in a feature colour. A strip of bright yellow on a child’s bedroom door is a real favourite. “It’s the small things that get you going,” she says. Fitting a piece of painted cardboard into the back of a dresser or chest of drawers is another hack. “It’s like the coloured lining of a jacket. It’s a flourish.”
Studholme is forever repainting the table legs of her kitchen table, too. Or rather, someone else is painting them. “I can’t paint,” she admits. “I’m too messy, I’m banned.”
When I ask what the biggest decorating mistakes are, she is reluctant to declare any. “I’m not sure there is such a thing as a mistake,” she says. But I push for an answer, and then she is unequivocal. “The biggest mistake is people who default to bright white for ceilings. If a ceiling is really white, you can read the confines of it, it is defined. The height comes down and it instantly makes the room look much smaller. It’s as if you have created a beautiful outfit and you haven’t done your hair.” That bad, I gasp? Yes, she laughs, that bad.
How to Redecorate by Joa Studholme and Charlotte Cosby is published by Octopus at £35. Order it for £30.80 from guardianbookshop.com
