HERE COMES THE SUN: OUR BEDROOM MAKEOVER

Our plan is for the baby to sleep in our room for the foreseeable future, so rather than decorating a nursery, we decided to redecorate our bedroom for us all as a family.

I’ve been following Sunshine Abou Bakar (@africanboheme) on Instagram for some time. When I first discovered her I was instantly drawn to her signature colour palette of earthy yellow tones — think ochre, mustard, tan and gold and orange browns. Yellow was my favourite colour as a young girl (with the addition of blue and green as I grew older — sunshine is the colour that makes me smile, blue as the sea, green as the trees). When I thought about the colour of the bedroom, it felt like the same route I wanted to go down. Yellow to brighten up my day whatever the weather, and earth tones to ground me. Yellow in Feng Shui, the ancient Chinese practice of arranging your living space energetically to create balance with the natural world, is the colour of wellbeing as it is both vibrant and gentle. According to Vastu Shastra, the ancient Vedic science of home design, yellow in the bedroom channels happiness, positivity, optimism and intelligence.

I worked with Farrow & Ball on the room’s colour scheme (as well as a few other painting projects we did in the house — to be shared soon!). The first step was a colour consultation with one of their brilliant Colour Consultant’s Joa Studholme — she’s been with the brand for over 25 years so knows their colour range inside out. If you’ve been following me for a while you’ll know that I studied furniture and product design, and love a bit of DIY so an hour with Joa flew by and I was there for every minute of it. We got to do it in-person pre the current lockdown in the UK however, the brand is currently offering virtual consultations. Joa made us think of combinations of tones that we wouldn’t have dreamt of ourselves. As we walked through our house you could see her taking everything in — from the way that the light falls, to our own personal style and needs, to the period of the property (built in the early ‘70s and really quite ‘70s!) When we got to the bedroom Joa instantly announced “India Yellow” — the exact colour that I had been planning since the idea to decorate had first come to mind. I was sure that maybe Nick had mentioned it but nope — it had popped into her mind all by itself! When we pulled the sample card out and put it against all the walls, we all quickly came to the conclusion that we weren't quite there. As I explained the vibe and showed her a quick mood board I’d put together — a rug that I thought would look great as a headboard, the ’60s/’70s carboot flower-patterned indigo, mustard, brown and blue curtains that I had picked up a few years back and were already up (another inspiration for the room) we realised that India Yellow didn’t have the ‘sunshine’ factor we were looking for. From her ring binder of painted samples, out came “Dutch Orange” from the Colour by Nature palette, created in collaboration with the Natural History Museum. The name threw me as orange did not sound right but name aside, once we popped it up, it did indeed give the rich warm yellow glow that I’d been envisioning.

We walked through to the ensuite bathroom which I had imagined would be along the lines of terracotta or cinnamon — richer and redder earth tones to complement the bedroom and pick up on another of the colours in the curtains but Joa wasn’t sure. “You need the bathroom to be just as bold; otherwise it’s almost a disappointment going from the bedroom to the bathroom,” she said. Out came a couple of swatches of deep dark blues. We had mixed reactions — it was definitely bold and not what we were thinking at all! At the same time we had painted the bathroom in our last flat Farrow & Ball in “Pitch Black” so we knew how luxurious a saturated dark colour could be and a deep racing green had also been a contender for this space when we first moved in over 2 years ago. With that in mind we quickly settled on Joa’s suggestion of “Scotch Blue” which closely mimics the indigo of the bedroom curtains and creates a lovely backdrop to our wooden vanity, bamboo side table and the teal, green and pink accessories already in the bathroom (doesn’t sound like it works on paper but I hope you agree it does in the pics!).

Aside from their amazing colour range and the paint quality and finish, Farrow & Ball was our paint brand of choice thanks to their eco-friendly commitments. They were the first big paint brand to move to an entirely water-based range and their entire range is classed as minimal or low VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) AKA what causes that strong chemical paint smell. Low VOC paints are really important when you look at the long-term emissions in your rooms (especially important in a bedroom) Farrow & Ball measures their paints according to the French Indoor Quality Decree (the measure of emittance from the paint 28 days after drying) and scores A+ across its entire range.  With the baby in mind, it was also important to us that the brand’s water-based paints are certified child- and baby-safe in accordance with Toy Safety Standards. 

We are so happy with how both the bathroom and bedroom have turned out, especially given that we’ll be spending a huge amount of time in here over the next few months. The bathroom, painted in a light sheened “Estate Eggshell,” is easy to wipe and clean (we even painted the bath panel which cheered up the existing tiles, built in vanity and suite no end). It imbued our bathroom with an elegant but masculine boutique hotel luxe feel. We didn’t change anything else about it in terms of accessories (our existing towels looked fab in there) other than finally hanging up a ’70s plant pot that we’d been storing. The bedroom at night is cosy, rich and warm, and during the day it feels like a piece of Morocco — the deeply pigmented and matte “Modern Emulsion'' allows the light to play across it and is completely washable and scuff-proof. For the first week we kept thinking that we’d left the bedroom lights on in the day, thanks to the warm glow that pours out of the bedroom door and into the hallway. By painting the ceiling the very same colour, we gave the illusion of the walls going on and on rather than getting cut off by a standard white ceiling which makes you look up rather than across. We accented the room with a recycled sari bedspread and cushions that played on the bold flowers in the curtains, and a knitted throw carboot find. Our sheer pink ’70s Italian side tables (a junkyard find) and some ’60’s/’70s Shattaline (also known as Crackle Amber Glass) lampstands with vintage yellow-toned spun fibre lampshades keep everything as muted and serene as possible — seeing as I am anything but a minimalist.

We’re really proud of the space we’ve created to welcome the baby — who wouldn’t want to be welcomed into the world with the warm embrace of sunshine yellow?!

*This blog post was created in partnership with Farrow & Ball.