Colour isn't decoration, it's a tool
- Apr 10
- 5 min read
People often treat colour as the last decision - something to settle once everything else is in place. I treat it as the first. It shapes how a room feels, how it functions, how it makes you want to move through a space. It's working on you long before you've noticed it's there.
Blue stirs the intellect which is why it works so well in a study or home office, and why I notice that my more cerebral clients consistently gravitate towards it. Green, with its connection to the natural world, is calming; instinctively, it belongs in a bedroom. Orange and red carry energy – they're made for hosting spaces, dining rooms, those rooms designed for conversation and life.
These aren't arbitrary associations. They're patterns that hold across people and spaces, and they're backed by the psychology of colour in ways that Karen Haller explores brilliantly in The Little Book of Colour – a book that has confirmed for me what I'd already been feeling through years of practice.
But here's what I think gets missed: colour's power isn't only in the bold choices. Deciding which tone of white to paint a wall is as much a colour decision as is picking green, blue or yellow. A warm white does something entirely different to a cool one; the power is in the intentionality, not the intensity. Start to tune in to what an extraordinary tool colour is and it changes how you think about every room.
Colour is personal – and that's what makes it complicated
Throughout my career I've worked with clients who have a fear of colour, who find it overwhelming, and I believe the reason for this is that our relationship to it isn't neutral. It's shaped by our upbringing, culture and personal history. Our thoughts on it are influenced by the colours we grew up around, what we wore as a child and how our parents' home felt. We carry all of that into the rooms we create as adults, often without realising it.
It's these experiences – our upbringing, our heritage, our cultural associations with colour – that explain why fear of it is so common, and why I take it so seriously. Some clients come to me absolutely certain their walls cannot be anything other than white. Put a pale nude-pink sample next to a stark white wall and the reaction can be visceral – almost panic. I understand that completely. My job with those clients isn't to push them towards a bright green; it's to find the version of colour that introduces some atmosphere and warmth into the space without triggering that anxiety.
At the other end, there are clients whose relationship to colour is pure joy – who know exactly what they love and are fearless about using it. Those projects are a particular kind of pleasure, and none more so than a project I did recently with a bright pink hallway.
What the pink hallway taught me about restraint
I worked with a client who gave me the kind of brief designers dream about. She loved pink, she trusted me completely and she let me run a bold, warm pink through her entire Victorian house – hall, landing, ceiling included – without even colour-testing it first. That is a rare and fun thing.
It sounds like a lot but here's what made that project work: the restraint wasn't in the colour. It was in everything around it. We had one colour running consistently through a transitional space with no clutter competing for attention and the lighting carefully considered. The result was something that felt simultaneously bold and calm – and that's not a contradiction. It just requires understanding that colour's impact is never only about the colour itself. It's about dosage – what surrounds it, how much of it there is and what plane it's on.
Floors and ceilings are one of my favourite places to do something interesting with colour for exactly this reason. A vivid red marmoleum floor, for instance, is a strong choice – but it's one plane, and it works in a much softer way in a room with nude plaster walls. The same intensity spread across every surface would be a very different room.
How I approach colour in every project
My conscious tools for using colour are fairly straightforward: 1) Start with the mood and atmosphere you want to create, then choose colour in service of that. 2) Read what the client is telling you – not just what they say they like, but what they wear, what's on their pinboard, how they live. 3) Read what the building is telling you: a Victorian terrace responds to colour differently to a contemporary new build.
But then there's the more instinctive layer. One thing that separates designers who are really good with colour from those who are less experienced is understanding the difference between varying the hue and varying the tone. Someone less experienced will reach for contrast by changing the hue – green wall, red sofa, blue rug. It's bold, but blunt. The more sophisticated move is to work the tone – the intensity, the saturation, the volume of a colour – while keeping the palette tighter.
Think of it as a dial. Not just which colours are in the room, but which are speaking loudly and which are almost whispering. If I had to work with pink, green and blue in a study, I'd instinctively make blue the lead, green the mid-note, and pink barely a trace. Not strong blue, strong green, strong pink, but a mid-tone blue, deep green and pale pink. The balance lives in the volume, not the variety.
The question underneath every colour decision
My own home is a good example of this in practice. It's a contemporary new build with a pared-back materials palette – wood, white walls, steel and concrete – and that sets the terms for what colour can do. We wanted to bring some warmth into the bedrooms without disrupting the calm of the whole, so we chose colours from the Paint & Paper Library architectural range and dialled them right back. A pale green in one daughter's room, pale pink in the other. The tongue and groove ceilings stayed white, so the colour could pop just slightly without overwhelming the space. It's a small dose, but it changes everything about how those rooms feel.
Some designers also deliberately introduce a moment of tension – a colour that's slightly off with the others – to stop a scheme feeling too resolved, too neat. I understand the appeal, and the best practitioners do it brilliantly. But my instinct is towards harmony. I want a room to feel calm and considered, everything resolved. That's where I find the most satisfaction as a designer – and ultimately, it's where most people find the most comfort in living.
Colour is an extraordinary tool and I think most people underestimate the power that it can have. But underneath every colour decision is the same question: how do I want someone to feel when they walk into this room. Colour is just the means. Get the feeling right and the room takes care of itself. That, more than anything, is what I'm trying to do.
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