Sophie Robinson Shows How To Colour Your Home
This is my post on how to colour your home with Sophie Robinson. If you can’t see the video please click here.
The Great Interior Design Challenge
As a regular judge, and on the most recent series a finalist guest judge, Sophie makes no bones about the fact she is massively into colour.
Sophie Robinson – queen of colour
For me colour has been a bit of a taboo in recent years.
When I was styling people’s rooms at university I had a crazy young-thing palette. The interiors I’ve been designing in recent years have been with the purpose of selling and it’s well-known that muted, and lets face it safe tones appeal to more people.
Colour is very subjective so it’s safer to go with what people are more likely to like than go for the wow, but also marmite, factor.
I’ll be honest though and say that I really do like grey and off-white as I find it calming. Even I’m finding it a bit boring now though.
Seeing as I’m likely to stay put for a little while in my latest renovation project I was keen to experiment a little. I was ready to venture out of my colour comfort zone.
Colour workshop
Her enthusiasm is so infectious – as is her addiction to colour!
We all felt really at ease experimenting with different schemes, but it was also interesting to learn about the rules of colour.
Although Sophie went to great pains to point out that rules are there to be broken – my kind of girl!
We looked at the colour wheel and how this can be used to come up with different colour schemes, which sparked off a few ideas for me.
Not so moody board
I think I exasperated Sophie a little by wanting pictures with the exact colours, patterns and furniture I was after to put on my board.
She kept flinging bits of bronze ribbon at me saying “go on live a little”.
True enough, once I let my hair down and filled in some of the gaps it was not only liberating but made for a much more inspiring board.
If you are even contemplating on going on one of her workshops I can highly recommend it.
Sophie’s top tips
I grabbed Sophie for a quick interview at the end to get her top tips. You can watch the video of course, but here is what she said:
Me: “You’re famous for colour aren’t you?”
Sophie: “Anyone in the creative industry knows it’s such a wonderful tool to have in your toolkit.
But I do appreciate people struggle when it comes to their home. They might wear colour or buy colourful artwork but when it comes to their home they get stuck.
Me: “So what are your top tips?”
Sophie: “Feel the fear and do it anyway.
At the moment we are seeing lots of the dark and inky hues, lots of blue black colours, charcoal greys, and navys, very cosseting, I love the drama they create.
So we are moving away from the pale and Scandi interiors.
Me: “What do people get wrong when using colour?”
Sophie: “The main thing people get wrong with colour is they don’t do enough of it. For me wrong is very bland interiors with no personality, no mood, no vibe.
People need to think about using colour in different proportions, colour scheming isn’t a science it’s definitely an art. But as a rule I think of using one hero colour in 60-70% of the scheme, and then a secondary colour which will be in about 30%.
The new colourful me!
Since I went on that course I’ve been like an exploding colour bomb.
I will do future posts on each room coming together of course.
I’m still on the lookout for the exact teal/emerald chaise longue I’m after, so if anyone knows anyone….
*By the way, thank you to The Danish Collection, Sevenoaks for letting me film their beautiful display.
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