Our home for the past fifteen years has been a 1930s 3 bedroom semi-detached house. The hall, stairs and landing were decorated professionally around a year after we moved in, as I was due to have our second baby and I suddenly panicked about the state of the decor, realising we’d have lots of visitors coming to the house. The decorator applied lining paper to all the walls and painted in traditional magnolia, with white woodwork. We had a beige carpet. It was very bland!
Fast forward to 2012, by now we had 3 children and I’m struck by how cluttered the hall looks with a bulky radiator cover and shoe cupboard:
A bit later I updated things, getting rid of the radiator cover and shoe storage and painting the main wall in a dark greeny-blue colour.
But more recently I knew it was time for a complete makeover, rather than just a quick update. The woodwork and walls were looking scruffy, but I was drawing a blank on colour and style. The hall has a lovely stripped staircase which I thought about painting, but wondered if I’d regret at a later time. But if we kept all the pine, I wasn’t sure about suitable colours to complement it. I tested both white and a pinky-beige up the stair wall, but they didn’t look right. I didn’t particularly want the woodwork to be white anymore either. Then I saw a gorgeous paint colour on social media that looked like a cup of cocoa, and discovered it was Brown 01 by a new paint company, called Lick Home.
It looked so rich next to the wood, so I felt it had potential for our hall. I bookmarked the picture, then by coincidence a little while later I was approached by Lick about a potential collaboration, so as you can imagine, I was fully up for that!
What especially appealed to me about working with Lick was the fact they offer a consultation with one of their colour experts. This was music to my ears as I wanted someone to bounce ideas off. I had been leaning into a more relaxed, bohemian interior style recently and was able to chat to the lovely Tash over a fifteen minutes virtual meeting. I showed her the space through my phone and and was thrilled that she could see lots of scope! This got me excited and when I mentioned how much I liked the colour Brown 01 and wanted a slight boho vibe with a little nod to the 70s, she knew exactly the colour palette that would work in our home. This was her plan:
Antonia – Lick – Colour Consultancy 2 2I felt like the palette would not compete or enhance the warm tones of the pine staircase too much, in fact it would probably neutralise or offset it a little. It was classy and timeless. I adored it and couldn’t wait to get started!
Feature Wall in Brown 01
Once the paint and decorating kit arrived, I taped off the edges of the main hall wall for a neat finish and cut in with a small brush, painting around the edges to fill in the rest with a roller. The paint is a really nice consistency to work with, neither runny nor too thick and coverage was good. I applied two coats.
Woodwork/Walls in Greige 02
By the way have you ever seen a better paint tin than this? I haven’t! A screw lid, plastic inner lid with a ring pull and a handle for easy pouring. It even comes with a stirrer! I absolutely love the design and thought that has gone into the paint packaging.
Downstairs, I painted the door frames, skirting board, picture rail and wall above the rail in Greige 02 which is a perfect grey/beige. The paint has a matt finish and can be applied to multiple surfaces. So I also painted it onto the radiator and a wooden cupboard at the bottom of our stairs. On walls it is soon touch-dry. On woodwork, it dries quickly, too, but you need to be careful not to scratch or knock the finish as it needs a little longer to cure fully (about a week).
Ceilings in White 02
If you can start with your ceilings, it makes sense to work your way from the top down, however I needed my husband’s help to reach the really high parts of the ceiling above the stairs and he couldn’t spare the time until later on in the decorating process! So we did the ceilings last, but just went carefully and tried not to spatter any white paint, especially on the brown wall. Again, I cut in the edges with a brush as far as reaching was possible, then we rollered the rest using a long handled paint roller.
I’ve still got a little bit of finishing off upstairs, the doors on the landing were previously painted white, but are due a freshen up too so using up my leftover White 02 on them and they are looking pretty lovely! I’m really happy with how the whole project has gone, the entrance hall looks so much smarter than before and as soon as we can have visitors around again I’ll be keen to show it off. Once everything is completed, including a new stair and landing carpet, I’ll do a further update to share all the details! If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
Collaborative post with Lick Home
© Copyright 2020 Antonia, All rights Reserved. Written For: Tidylife
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