Shades of grey: decorating with the most elegant of neutrals.

Let us rewind to October 1999, we had just moved into a Victorian townhouse. It was situated in a beautiful Sussex village not far from the pretty town of Lewes…

That year having endured weeks of dust and debris whilst the central heating was installed we had at last begun the fun bit. We were starting to redecorate. I remember ‘helping’ to strip paint from the doors, the skirting boards and the floor. No nook or crevice or any where else that was covered in layers of old paint was safe from me and my paint stripping gun! We decided to paint the hallway, including the ceiling ‘gun metal’ grey. My in-laws and my parents were aghast grey??

 Once painted it looked gorgeous, warm and cosy not dark at all and the ancient stripped pine (remember it was 1999!) contrasted beautifully.

Fast forward 17 years…. and once again the grey paint pots are out!

For months I have been contemplating a very dark  grey bedroom make-over, ceilings and all. My preferred colour palette forever changes, but was presently looking like this:

If you follow me on instagram you may have seen these pics before? Of my ‘mood board’

 Then I received an email from amazon recommending a book to me: it looked interesting,  I had seen it written about on some blogs recently. I immediately popped it on my wish list and forgot about it.

It was this book: Shades of Grey by Kate Watson-Smyth.

However 10 minutes later, two twitter messages pinged through, one from Amara and one from Kate herself to say I had won a copy of the book via a twitter competition. How amazing and what a superb coincidence.

It is a stunning book, a perfect bedside book too you can dip in and out to your hearts delight!

If you haven’t used grey on your walls before it is well worth a read. Interesting facts about this very popular colour/tone/shade abound, and there are also plenty of common sense tips too.
For instance always always use a sample pot ( this really is one colour you don’t want to get wrong Marc bought home our chosen sample and when we put it on the walls it looked so drab it was like a dungeon)

Light is so important when decorating with grey. Luckily for us out bedroom is large enough and bright enough to take a complete covering.

As you can see we have started decorating with our chosen shade of grey, and we love it. The knobs above will be enhancing the wardrobe doors. The dust sheets are still up, I am tripping over diy painting paraphernalia but I couldn’t resist a few ‘test shots’ even before the paint was dry. I will of course do a huge reveal when it is finished!

Thank you for my book prize Amara and of course to Kate who deserves huge congrats too on writing such a superb book!

Happy wednesday…!