In with the new

Farrow & Ball's new colour launches always set the tone for how we're going to be decorating, and the brand's Joa Studholme sees a very rich future for us all

- Pip Rich

What comes first, the (roughly) bi-yearly drop of new Farrow & Ball paint colours or our desire to decorate with them? It’s hard to tell – the brand’s colour curator Joa Studholme’s finger is so firmly on the style pulse that while she claims to be creating shades that the public have been asking for, each collection also manages to change and shape the direction of decoration. Stiffkey Blue saw us embrace inky dark shades in 2014, Sulking Room Pink ignited an enduring love for blush in 2018 and now this new set is likely to build on and increase the way we all seem drawn to particularly luxuriant tones.

‘I feel people want colours that are rich and like they’ve been there forever, nothing too shiny and new,’ Joa says. ‘This collection is all inspired by little treasures from around the house, deeply pigmented but slightly muted, like Duster’s yellow – inspired by a duster – or Douter, which takes its name from the Victorian term for a candle snuffer.’ Douter, Joa predicts, is going to be this palette’s standout because ‘it’s the love child of two of our most popular colours, Green Smoke and Inchyra Blue, and has that smokiness, that tarnish, of the inside of an old brass candle snuffer’. She suggests choosing it for rooms that you use late at night. ‘I’d pair with old Farrow & Ball favourite Mouse’s Back on the floor and Reduced Green, from this new palette, on the trim.’