How Decorative Paint Can Transform A Room

Sometimes the smallest interventions can completely change the character of a room. Not every interior needs an expensive piece of bespoke joinery or a major architectural change. Occasionally, all that's missing is a little personality.

We were originally asked by a client to help source furniture for his living room. The joinery and fireplace were already in place, but the room still felt slightly flat. As we began introducing a colourful rug and softer furnishings, we started thinking about how the existing fireplace could become more of a focal point too.

Finding An Opportunity For Something Playful With Paint

The room had beautiful period proportions and Art Deco references, so we didn't want to introduce something that felt disconnected from the architecture. Instead, we saw the fireplace as an opportunity to take something already there and make it feel much more individual.

I'd wanted to work with artist and designer Cecilia Carey for some time. Cecilia's background is in theatre design, and her work has a wonderful sense of playfulness and transformation, so we commissioned her to develop a hand-painted design for the fireplace.

Together we landed on something that sits somewhere between Moroccan pattern and Art Deco geometry. The striped design gives the fireplace a completely new presence in the room, while still feeling connected to the period details around it.

Getting The Colour And Finish Right

As with most seemingly simple design ideas, there was quite a lot of testing behind the finished result. We experimented with the pattern and colours before settling on Paint & Paper Library's Copper Beech, which picked up an existing paint colour elsewhere in the house and helped connect the fireplace to the wider interior.

Practicality mattered too. This isn't a working fireplace, which gave us more freedom with the materials we could use, but it still needed to withstand everyday life. The finished design was properly sealed so glasses can be put down and the fireplace can be used without it becoming something precious that nobody wants to touch.

Small Changes Can Have A Big Impact

What I particularly like about this project is that the transformation wasn't expensive or complicated. Fundamentally, it involved an existing fireplace, some paint and a really good idea.

There can be a temptation in interior design to assume that creating something distinctive requires a large budget. Often it's more about recognising where there's an opportunity to do something unexpected. A relatively small decorative detail can give an otherwise restrained room the character it was missing.

It's also why we enjoy collaborating with independent artists and makers at Kinder. They bring their own skills and point of view to a project, creating things that we simply couldn't produce ourselves. The result is a home that feels much more personal to the people living there, rather than a collection of things that could have been bought anywhere.

And sometimes, giving an existing fireplace a completely new personality is all a room really needs.

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