Grey. Grey. Grey. You can do it right, but how?

Grey is the dominant colour in London. With the city being grey in architecture and weather it is a colour that really works in interior spaces. Although I am very much a maximalist when it comes to colour and love to inject as much of it as possible into a space, I do use grey tones to add that neutral band. Colour to me makes a space warm, welcoming, exciting and vibrant. When the city is grey, it is nice to walk into a room of coloured pattern and print, putting a smile on your face. It is good however to have a neutral to balance the space like a grey or white. Whereas cream was once the neutral colour to use, grey has overtaken it and is the dominating colour. Picking the right grey is very important however and can be difficult.

A grey, like any colour, comes in an abundance of shades and tones, and if the wrong shade is used, the room can look very cold and unwelcoming. A grey with blue tones may seem very cold. If you really like the colour and want to use it, bring in some yellow linens and rich indigo cottons to add that flair and oomph to the space.

If you want to go for a more cool grey, with white undertones, then blush pinks and baby blues can really cosy up the space.

When I use greys, my favourite brand to first go to is Little Greene. Little Greene’s colours are beautiful and don’t appear cold, dark or lifeless and flat. French grey is a classic and very popular colour, coming in four variants, pale, mid, dark and original. It looks well in hallways, and works when paired with a brightly coloured door.

Little Greene came out with a collection of greens and I will quite often look at this collection for a grey. Pompeian Ash 293, Putti 292, North Brink Grey 291, Grey Moss 234, are all colours I adore because of the green undertones in them which really warm up the grey. Grey moss is a beautiful colour that works with oranges and pinks to make a more feminine space, but also with olive greens and blues and whites, creating a lovely scheme.

Grey is the new cream and it appears to be sticking. However, do place your grey on a sample in the room before painting the entire room. Due to the direction of the windows in the room, the light entering the room can be very different and really affect the colour tone of wall colours.

Think about your colour choices and the use of grey in your home. I always see grey as a neutral that should be used with other colours to enhance and not as the dominating colour. However, this is personal preference and grey can look beautiful and very dramatic when used as the dominating colour.

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