Be creative WITH COLOUR

Brighten up your home with the latest paint techniques and colour combinations

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Try... colour blocking

Give your walls extra punch with this bold and eye-catching paint treatment

ADD IMPACT In its basic form, colour blocking is simply combining a variety of block colours in one area. It can be used as a technique to highlight a room’s features, such as doors, window recesses, trims and furniture or can liven up a blank wall in the same way as a coloured canvas or piece of art.

COMBINE COLOURS While colour blocking works particularly well with bold colours from opposite spectrums of the colour wheel creating a strong visual contrast, there are no hard and fast rules. If you’d prefer a less impactful look, calmer pastels or tonal shades can work equally well as long as there is a degree of contrast between the hues you choose.

GET IN POSITION Colour blocks can be lined up, staggered or overlapping, or take the form of bands, stripes and geometric shapes, but clean lines and angular shapes are key to this technique. Bold blocks of colour can look striking as a backdrop for a large piece of statement furniture such as a sofa, sideboard or desk.

LINE THINGS UP ‘Plan out your panel outlines faintly in pencil using a level and masking tape before you start painting, taking the position of furniture and wall fixtures into consideration,’ says Helen Shaw, marketing director at Benjamin Moore. ‘Using intersecting panels to frame wall fixtures and artwork is an elegant way to design a space.’