If you are looking to add design interest to your home, one of the easiest ways to do this is with paint. It’s budget-friendly, you can do it yourself relatively quickly, and it’s fun to try out different colours in different places. Plus, you can always paint over it if you don’t like it!
One of the things that sets ‘designed’ spaces apart from the run of the mill is the use of colour and pattern. It can feel daunting to take the plunge with colour or pattern in a room, as we think we need to keep everything neutral. But at the end of the day neutral normally ends up as boring. If you have no contrast in a space, you have no interest. You probably wouldn’t go out wearing beige head to toe, so why would you ‘dress’ your room in the same way?
If you add some statement colour, a pattern or two and something dark, these differences will give you something to look at in your room. They will be stimulating and ultimately, they will make you feel happy! The following easy to execute paint ideas could bring the design interest to your home you are looking for.
Easy Ways to Add Design Interest with Paint to a Kitchen
I added paint in two different areas, and tiles in a third, to give this uniformly light grey kitchen some definition and character.
To save the expense of tiling the backsplash, I decided to paint it Little Greene Hicks Blue. This co-ordinates well with the existing slab of black, sparkle worktop that serves as the direct backsplash to the hob. This wall paint also gives definition to the kitchen area and allows the dining space of the room to be a different zone.
The second place I painted was the kickboards. I’d seen a beautiful advert for Puck kitchens and I set about deciphering what made these kitchens so desirable. One of their trademarks is painting the kickboards to bring life and character to the kitchen. The paint in this area really lifts the cupboard run and gives a focal point of interest between the light grey slab front cupboards and the wood floor.
Tile the Reverse of the Kitchen Island
The area on the back of the kitchen island was really boring. It’s often an area that can be over-looked during kitchen design. To add design interest I found these geometric tiles with blue, green and grey tones. I worked out they would need minimum cutting if I laid them with a fairly wide grout line. Being my first tiling project I wanted to keep it as simple as possible! I only had to cut the very top row and I used an all in one, pre-mixed adhesive and grout. These tiles have completely transformed this aspect of the kitchen.
The chosen blue and white colour scheme continues with the addition of a rug to the floor, an oil cloth for the table and dining chairs upholstered in Clarke and Clarke’s Orbit in Midnight. The teak sideboard and dining chairs ground the space with their darker tones and provide a further counterpoint to the original light grey.
Easy Ways to Add Design Interest with Paint to a Bedroom
It’s so easy to paint a bedroom a light, off white and leave it at that. Oftentimes we choose light carpet in bedrooms, so without any contrast in the room it’s not a very stimulating place to be. Understandably it needs to be calm for sleeping, but adding paint for design interest can be inspiring and motivating.
Recently I saw several designers continuing paint from the walls up onto the ceiling to create design interest in bedrooms. I decided to try this to create a feeling of a cosy nook. Firstly, I painted a wedge shape on the walls and connected the top of those lines on the ceiling. I chose Benjamin Moore’s Cushing Green – to tie in with the walls already painted in Little Greene Pale Clay. Additionally, this colour co-ordinated well with the Roman blind in Longleat by Prestigious Textiles. An alternative to the safari fabric is this version by Foy & Co.
There needed to be further colour interest in the room, so as this bedroom is in a dormer I used the architecture of the window wall to create further colour zones. I painted the straight lower part of the wall and the short length of vertical wall where the sloped ceiling meets the flat dormer roof.
That left the door wall without any colour, so I used a technique I’d seen to add a border around the door frame.
Last but not least we decided to paint the bedside table. It had become a bit tatty and so with a light rub down and a couple of coats of paint we really transformed this piece of furniture.
These zones of paint have really made this room come alive. Now there are points of contrast around the room and it’s visually interesting and appealing.
A Continuous Paint Border
Another technique to easily add design interest to a home with paint, is to create a half and half effect on every wall in the room. The horizontal line in this bedroom was taken from the bottom of the windowsill and carried around the room. The Hicks Blue on the lower half of the wall grounds the space, but the white above keeps the room feeling large and bright.
Easy Ways to Add Design Interest with Paint to a Staircase
Looking to the architectural, or structural, details of your home can suggest some interesting areas to paint. Door architraves are becoming a popular way to add colour to a home without painting whole walls. Another place that often has structural interest ripe for highlighting, is the staircase.
In this nook under the stairs I painted the wall Little Greene Pleat to cosy up this space. Adding a Poole pottery table lamp with contrasting burgundy shade gives a zing of colour contrast. The staircase was originally orange pine, so this needed a freshen up to white. But the stringer along the side of the staircase suggested to me another area to paint.
Finished in the same green as the understairs area this go faster stripe brings the area alive with design interest. Furthermore it gives your eye somewhere to rest on this luscious colour.
I hope these suggestions for easy ways to add design interest with paint have inspired you to take a look at your own home, and identify some places that paint could bring the room alive!
A final mention of my wonderful helpers on aspects of this project – thank you for getting involved boys!
If you’d like me to help you add visual interest with paint to your home, the Designer by your Side service might be a good idea. Priced per hour, I visit your home and talk through the rooms you’d like to work on and we develop ideas for the interior design scheme together. If you’d like to find out more, or book an appointment, you can fill in the contact form here or call me on 07596 533086.