Farrow & Ball’s new palette champions overlooked everyday colours
Paddington Bear, it turns out, is not the UK’s only notable lover of marmalade. Named after the Portuguese for quince, the fruit that inspired the British breakfast staple, ‘Marmelo’, one of the 12 new colours in Farrow & Ball’s latest paint-shade drop, is a favourite of the brand’s renowned colour curator Joa Studholme (pictured above with the brand’s creative director Charlotte Cosby).
‘Who could fail to be comforted by that familiar orange, reminiscent of warm, buttered toast?’ she asks, explaining that the shade brings to mind ‘bountiful shelves of a larder bursting with jars of pickles and jams’. ‘It’s warm and restorative,’ she adds, so it was a perfect choice for the woodwork on the dresser in her own Somerset kitchen.
It’s paired with other treasures from the collection: ‘Reduced Green’ on the cabinets; ‘Duster’ on the panelled splashback; and ‘Douter’ on the chairs. Sharing a grounded, earthy quality, the colours are all what Studholme refers to as ‘ordinary treasures’ – shades gathered from the world of utility and function (‘Duster’, for instance, references the muted mustard of the cloths found under many kitchen sinks) that suit a trend she has seen for
‘deeply pigmented tones that feel like they come from the past’.
Three of the hues, in fact, do have more of a history, as this is the first Farrow & Ball palette to include colours from its extensive archive. Studholme loves ‘Etruscan Red’ and ‘Broccoli Brown’ because, she explains, ‘despite being rich, they have a quietness’, while ‘Sap Green’ is a natural shade that has proved enduringly popular.
Of course, all of the 149 shades in the brand’s archive are available on request at all times, but moving them back into the main colour card signals a shift Studholme has noticed in how we approach colour. ‘Now that we spend more time in our homes, I felt it was appropriate to celebrate commonplace hues, to find joy in the familiar. Having developed colours for Farrow & Ball for more than 25 years, much of it is gut instinct, but this quieter, more considered palette feels expressive without being shouty, which I think will suit our interiors going forward.’ farrow-ball.com
