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Victorian terrace, Ellingford
Calder Road living room
A dark front room with a low ceiling, turned into the cosiest room in the house with deep green walls and a reworked fireplace.
Room
Living room
Budget
£10k to £25k
Timescale
9 weeks
The palette
The colours in this room.
Matched to paint, fabric and tile samples we tested on site, in daylight and lamplight.
Bottle green
Walls and ceiling
Tobacco
Hearth tiles
Old brass
Lights
Oat
Curtains
The brief
“We kept painting it white to make it feel bigger. It never worked. We wanted to stop fighting the dark and enjoy it.”
How we did it
The front room at Calder Road faces north and gets the sun for about an hour in June. Ruth and David had tried three shades of white and the room still felt grey and cold, so it was used for little more than storing the Christmas tree.
We went the other way. Walls, skirting and ceiling are all one deep bottle green in a soft matt finish, so the corners disappear and the room feels wrapped rather than small. The old gas fire came out and a small wood burner went in, with a tobacco-brown tiled hearth and an oak mantel made by a joiner in the next village.
What we did
Colour-drenched walls, woodwork and ceiling
New hearth, mantel and stove
Wall lights and two lamps on one switch
Sofa reupholstered in a rust wool
Shelving built into both alcoves
Planning something similar?
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