future simple passive

The painters/decorators arrived.  






We had chosen Little Greene paints - see my earlier post Choosing Paint.  So all paint colours mentioned below are from their range.









  


  

I was so excited to see the colours go on - they were absolutely beautiful.


A 'Juniper Ash' colour block in the sitting room on a elegantly soft and warm 'Tusk' wall wash.

In Stroud we are lucky to have Bailey Paints - a wonderful cornucopia of all things paint-related.  It was to them that I turned for everything to do with paint.  As I was quite overwhelmed about choosing colours I took advantage of their Colour Consultation Service.  Jane Peckitt, an experienced professional furniture painter and decorator, came for 2hr site visit and I couldn't have done it without her.

Little Greene's Colours of England & Colour Scales, and Grey Collection

Jane arrived into the chaos of the building site, with about 8 or 9 contractors also on site.  Her secret weapon was a file of nearly A4 size colour samples of the entire Little Greene colour library (for more info about why I chose Little Greene see here).  What a difference they made to job of looking at colours.  At that size it was so much easier to see what the colours looked like in situ and to see how they related to other colours.  

My tester pot samples

We started upstairs, peeled back the protective floor coverings and took a look at how different colours worked with the floor.  Jane listened carefully to what I what I wanted to achieve and used her amazing knowledge of colours to guide me through the options.  She was great at knowing which colours looked complementary together, moving expertly between different shades completely.  Jane was also able to flick quickly between the samples to lay her hands on samples that would offer me a brighter or more sombre option of any colour combo.  







We ended up choosing one of the colour scales from Little Greene's Grey Collection; flint, tusk and limestone.  These gave a lovely soft graduated background and then chose accent colours for my colour blocks.  I wanted to do something interesting with paint and between Pinterest and Remodelista I had been really inspired by painting just a block of colour which doesn't go up to the ceiling and also wraps around corners.  

I have fallen in love with Little Greene's Juniper Ash, a gorgeous rich warm blue, which will be used upstairs and downstairs.  And for our bedroom I've chosen the beautiful Bone China Blue which manages to be both blue and grey and ever so calm and elegant. 









I felt really excited as I was delighted with the colours and my design rules (see here) were all being ticked!

It was really important to us that the materials we use "inside the envelope" are as healthy and environmentally friendly as possible. This is always a difficult choice as there is always a axis with these things and everyone will take a different position as to what they feel is 'green'.  The paints are marketed variously as eco, natural, green, and organic each implying a different viewpoint and ethos and the trick is discovering what that means, what you think is important and which direction you are going to go in...!








About 10yrs ago we first used an eco paint which was made from milk proteins.   We bought powdered pigment and mixed the colours ourselves.  We were very proud of ourselves but we had to admit that the paint coverage was patchy and not terribly stable as it yellowed over a couple of years.  

I wanted to choose paints with low toxicity, and environmentally friendly production methods.  I also wanted a paint product that could stand up to the rigours of family life.  I spent a number of weeks thoroughly researching the UK market in eco-friendly paints. 

All the products within the 'eco' end of the market vary hugely regarding-
the pigments they use
the binders used such as milk, veg based (e.g. soya), clay, or mineral derived
the VOCs (volatile organic chemicals)
the production methods
the additives

It's a bit of a nightmare to suddenly have to become an expert in all these things just to choose paint. I looked on the internet and the results are pretty poor as there really aren't many reviews out there regarding paint!  Low VOC is the most obvious starting point, the big brands are now obliged by law to bring the VOC levels down but they still don't compare to a lot of the eco-brands I looked at which are virtually no VOC.  It seems that in the past 10 years the eco paints have all become better at coverage and less patchy. As each company has a different ethos it's easy to end up going around in circles as they all tell you what is great about their paints and what green credentials they can offer.






After chatting to retailers, and pretty much everyone else I could find, as well as browsing a number of forums (hooray for Mumsnet) I realised that for most people colour choice is normally the biggest factor in choosing a brand of paint.   Intially it appears that everyone has the same colours, but it's only when you decide that you want to use a specific colour, such as dark blue, that you realise that each company will only have one or two shades and actually you do have an opinion about which you prefer- it's all in the detail.  You also find out really quickly that everyone has about 50 shades of white (did you see what I did there?).  How on earth does one go about selecting the correct white?!?  Generally you get what you pay for as the more expensive paints use greater amounts of pigments which makes their colours more complex.

© Mark Scott Photography

After taking lots of advice and thoroughly interrogating the colour charts we decided to use Little Greene Paint.  I felt that Little Greene was a great match for us as they have been one of the leaders for developing paint with excellent environmental credentials in the UK.  Their paints have been awarded the European Environmental standard and Child Safety accreditation which I find very reassuring.  I was also really interested in their "intelligent finish" paints which are designed to be washable and stand up to more wear and tear as well as being matt and beautiful- perfect for my home which is filled with small people who couldn't care less about the paint.  Little Greene is not in the budget end of the marketplace but I feel it is worth the extra as you get fantastic paint quality, with excellent coverage and a really, really, really good colour range (they use loads of pigment and the colours have masses of depth).  Decision made - tick!  Next, to choose some colours...







I thought you might be interested in the Paint companies which were also considered, we didn't choose them but they may work for you - 
Earthborne - lovely clay paint 
Auro - milk based paint
Farrow and Ball, Fired Earth, Pots of Paint, Nutshell Paints, Ecos