Finding the perfect painting partner.
As followers of our Instagram pages you will see how much our photography plays an integral role in presenting our beautiful soft furnishings and vintage pieces. We always enjoy shoot day, it's an enormous amount of work but this is the ultimate day playing dress up with your homes, styling, moving furniture, mixing it up, adding more, flowers galore, seriously the best day. This year we have decorated and really gone to town with our colour palette and let's just say the results are stunning. We could only have achieved these looks with the talent and support of our paint partner Edward Bulmer Natural Paint. After much consideration, consultation with our favourite decorators, samples ordered and tested, brands values considered and assessed; we were delighted when we agreed on choosing Edward Bulmer Natural Paint for our relaunch and new collections.
There really is nothing better than a freshly painted room to lift your home, re-energise your space with the promise of moving forward into a new phase in life. Certainly after our lock down period, having all looked at our four walls more than we ever imagined and created more mess in the house than ever before, this household was crying out for a re think and a celebration of colour.
The overwhelming choices of paint and paint brands.
More than ever, we are demanding more from our paints. We are not professional decorators, we go through the same processes everyone else does. The days of buying paint is a whole lot more overwhelming than a trip to the hardware shop and picking up a couple of tins of Dulux. Now we not only have to decide on the colours, but which brand of paint. Questions the discerning decorator must now ask - how much paint do I need, the cost, what's the coverage like, is it easily available when I undoubtedly run out because I have underestimated. Then, let's talk finishes, Matt, Eggshell, Satin, Soft, Silk and Gloss. Waking up on Friday morning declaring I am going to paint the sitting room this weekend needs far more thought than ever before.
Environmental Commitment
The process is just so much and as keen decorators we want a simple process, a colour palette that makes sense, and confident products that are as expected with good colour and coverage. The anxiety of the endless sample pots that just confuse and generate waste. With our eye firmly focused making environmentally friendly choices as much as possible, for us this means artisan and small scale production, handmade products, UK based production, sourcing vintage and promoting eco friendly interior design. Looking after the earth and leaving as negative impact as possible matters. When you open a fresh tin of paint the first thing that smacks you is the smell. It's seriously toxic, and for so long we have not questioned why we would put this toxic material on our walls through our beautiful homes which we created to keep our families safe and warm. Post decorating we wash our brushes and the water washes the toxins down the drain into our water systems. What were we thinking? No more.
Edward Bulmer - a passionate colourist.
Edward Bulmer Natural Paint are the pioneers, and the expert leaders in developing non toxic natural paints suitable for our 21st century homes and lives. These paints are all plant-based, easy to apply, dry quickly, breathable, durable and are available in both interior wall emulsion and woodwork and metalwork finishes.
Edward, a renowned interior expert with a vast experience of worldwide building projects; is a passionate colourist and his attention to detail regarding every paint colour is unmatched. How has it has been made, what are the raw materials used to make it. It not only matters that this paint colour will look beautiful in your home, for Edward, the paint must not cost the earth.
Edward's campaign to clean up the paint industry has been ground breaking and, the result - Edward Bulmer Natural Paint - sustainable natural paints using plant-based ingredients instead of petrochemical derived products. So partnering with Edward Bulmer Natural Paint has achieved results beyond our expectations. Firstly, it is completely liberating to discover a paint business that curates a focussed palette of colours that you can immerse yourself in. The choice is broad enough to cover any interior style or desire. The tones beautifully compliment each other making it much easier to partner contrasting colours as you will see. The coverage is excellent and the finish is kind of tactile for want of a better word, you have a desire to run your hands over the finish. The walls feel luxurious.
As Edward states, "By choosing a natural paint, you are making more than a colour choice, a paint choice, a fashion choice or even a lifestyle choice – you too are choosing to make a difference, to our building environments, our health, our nature and our planet." We love the menu of natural ingredients that go into these paints. When we wash our brushes knowing there are no harmful substances flowing into our water system, that makes a difference and even when we opened the tin, of course there is no toxic smell, these paints are made of natures natural colour pigments.
Our Rebellious Decorating Style
Immersing ourselves in the Edward Bulmer curated colour palette we are always looking at spaces with three colours in mind, the Walls, the Ceiling and the Accent colour. This makes choosing much easier as we don't have to nail just the one colour, but you have immediately started the layering process, developing the room beyond its five walls (the ceiling being the fifth). Then we start adding emotion and character, understanding how do we want to feel in this space, of course light and use is a consideration but colour stirs emotion, feelings of calm, tranquil, comfort and at the end of the day satisfaction and happiness. What do we LOVE - that is the driving force behind our rebellious untamed style.
The Day Collection
From our photoshoot you can see the main sitting room, lounge, or as we have renamed it the Day room to present our Day Collection. As a brave, alternative choice to the popular dark wall colours of greens, blues and greys, we fell for this stunningly rich, dark and warming deep pinky red colour fabulously named Pompadour after the Marquise de Pompadour, Jeanne Antoinette Poissonnoun a french noblewoman who was the lover of Louis XV. If you like your blue, green and earthy soft furnishings as we have chosen in the Day collection they are set off beautifully against the Pompodour backdrop. She really is a charming talking point of any living space.
Pompadour was covering a stone blue and we painted three coats. Over the following weeks you will hardly be able to miss our internal doors into the kitchen in Olympian green, pairing with the Pompadour enabled us to add another layer of colour in rich, elegant and mellow tones.
As discussed the key element in all our Rebel House rooms are a contrasting colour for the woodwork, coving and built-in furniture for an impactful accent colour against our wall colour. On recommendation from the Edward Bulmer team, we're loving the sludgy contrasting effect of Nicaragua on the ceiling and wood work. Now this is how to paint a ceiling!
The Dusk Collection
Our other completed room is the Rebel spare room themed around Dusk with a Drab Green walls and Aquatic as the accent colour for the woodwork.
The Drab Green, in name but certainly not in nature is actually much brighter in certain lights and has created the perfect background for the delicious orange and pink soft furnishings that sit against it. The Aquatic accent colour, harmonises the tone of Drab Green embellishing a deep richness with in the room that would never have been accomplished with a white or a grey.
From all the colours we tested, because the Edward Bulmer paints all come form natural plant based products, they all have a complementing tone which is a complete joy to experiment with.
So an enormous thank you to all the team at Edward Bulmer for their knowledge and advice. We are over the moon with the final finish and are sure we have inspired a fresh approach to colour and introduced serious consideration of the materials we use and the impact on our environments, and above all just enjoy the process. Look out for our third Dawn Collection in the coming weeks. Finally you're no doubt asking yourself who is the photographer that brought these colours to life. Thank you to our wonderful talented friend Rachael Smith Photography.
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