DE S IGN CENTRE
Greville Williams concurs: “The kaleidoscope effect of looking through doorways where different colours meet and entice you from one happy space to the next.” The interior designer Rachel Chudley agrees and believes that the natural world offers plenty of inspiration: “I think nature will continue to inspire colour schemes,” she says. “The idea of contrast between rooms might at first seem jarring, but really works when you consider the harmony in nature’s palette.” In accomplished hands, happy spaces are never about
chaos. “We like to use colour, but in a balanced way,” says Nicole Salvesen of Salvesen Graham. “This way you can make some brave choices but without the end result being too bold.” Of course, paint charts offer a range of delicious
possibilities but so, too, do fabrics and wallcoverings that offer the added dimension of pattern that allow the designer to play alchemist, combining colours to create an impact that is infinitely greater than a sum of the parts. In fabrics, texture also plays its part in creating a capacity to catch the light, with velvets, silks and damasks being the best examples. “I love the contrast between soft and firm, rough and smooth, glossy and
“I LOVE A LENGTH OF VIEW WITH AN INTERESTING COLOUR AT THE END TO CAPTURE MY CURIOSITY AND CARRY ME THROUGH A BUILDING OR SCHEME”
matt. It keeps things interesting,” says Benjamin
Frowein, CEO of Schumacher, the historic US fabric and wallcovering brand whose designs have starred in iconic movies, from My Fair Lady and Gigi, to I Love Lucy and The Age of Innocence. Recently, Schumacher opened its first European outpost in the South Dome offering joyously colourful designs, from its strikingly contemporary
‘Porterteleo’, to its embroidered
‘Bohemia’. Schumacher is just one of the showrooms at the Design Centre that promise rich pickings for colour hunters; Kit Kemp highlights Mulberry, GP & J Baker, Elitis and Pierre Frey as good places to start. Louisa Greville Williams and her business partner Sarah Vanrenen add Turnell and Gigon as well as Tissus d’Hélène, while Nicole Salvesen and Mary Graham point to their colourful new rug collection at Jennifer Manners, another recent arrival at the Design Centre. Feeling in a need of a lift? In the interior design community, the feeling on the streets is that colour’s the answer.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: A tonal colour scheme by Rachel Chudley that includes bespoke stained-glass doors and armchairs upholstered in ‘Janano’ fabric by Gaston y Daniela at Abbott + Boyd. Quadrille’s ‘Circles and Squares’
fabric (from Tissus d’Hélène) upholsters the sofa in this room designed by Vanrenen GW Designs, picking up on the tones of the kitchen cabinets. A bedroom by Salvesen Graham, whose colour philosophy is to be brave, but balanced
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Photo: Luis Ridao
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