When we moved in to our house we had an opportunity to have a fresh start with interior decorating as the previous decoration comprised damp, dirty and torn wallpaper. We steamed all this off and decided to paint the walls to keep the cost down. Any woodwork that was the original brown we kept that way, but anything that had previously been painted we painted over - on the basis that we would not then be covering up anything original. The question next was: should | we paint the house in Victorian colours or something else? This question boils down to the quest for "authenticity", and the philosophical question is: what is more authentic, following what the Victorians actually did, or following their approach to colour? We had already eliminated the option to follow their approach to pattern by our decision to paint the walls to keep the cost down. We decided to take the latter route, and took from the |  |
 | Victorians their love of rich, bold colour. Also, large rooms can take bold colours better than small ones, so why not take advantage of this? In defence of the route we took - to follow their approach to colour rather than what they actually did - it is worth | bearing in mind that no Victorian would have decorated their houses in keeping with the period in which they were built, unless those houses were mediaeval (in which case they would have gone for an overly-lavish version of mediaeval such as that seen at Castell Coch just North of Cardiff). |
Eclectic and BoldThe Victorians were eclectic in their taste and bold in their use of colour. They were also limited by technology in the colours they could use and were put off using too-bright colours because they showed the dirt from their coal fires - two problems they would have been happy to not have had. And if they had not had them, no doubt their approach to colour would have been even more adventurous. Given we had opted for bold colours, we had to decide which 
|  colours. Portmeirion village in North Wales has always been a favourite place and the use of colour there on the buildings is fascinating - a palette of bright, bold colours that you would think wouldn't work together but do. And a different colour combination from the palette was used on each building. What is more, all the colours were "traditional mediterranean" and so we could have a passing nod in the direction of "tradition" at the same time. So we decided |  to base our palette on Portmeirion colours, and mix and match them in each room the same way Portmeirion does for each building. |
 While not strictly from our chosen colour palette, we managed to fit in a wall painting after Mondrian in one room. | We visited Portmeirion half a dozen times, and took dozens of pictures of the buildings, and used these to create a palette of colours. The next task was to find the colours in paint form. To help us with this, we used Kevin McCloud's book Choosing Colours (see Choosing Paint), and particularly palette 53 in his book. The colours in the pictures here are rather brighter than in real life, but give a good impression of them. |  |
