paint

The best dark blue paint colours

As a follow up to my last post on ways to use indigo blue in your home, I want to show you what I believe are the best dark blue paint colours on the market. Dark blue is a popular colour choice at the moment, especially now that winter us upon us and we feel the need to turn the lights down low and hibernate. It is such a cosy, cocooning, yet also elegant colour, whether it’s an entire room cloaked in its velvety hues or simply one wall.

With all the different ranges of paint on the market today, it can be difficult to find the right colour for your particular home, so here’s my pick of the best dark blue paints out there and how they can work throughout different lights and times of day.

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A Little Front Door Makeover for Spring

I recently took it upon myself to give our front door a new lease of life with a lick of paint. Since we moved into our house just over a year ago now, the door has been a shade of pale mushroom – not exactly an offensive colour, but just lacking in a bit of personality. So, I thought it was about time we added our stamp to the front of the house. Who doesn’t love a dose of kerb appeal as they approach their house from the street?!

I had always envisaged painting the front door a gorgeous, deep navy (i.e. something like this), however we are trying to stick to a budget whilst we go about updating and redecorating the house, so head ruled over heart and I resorted to using up a tin of another (still gorgeous) Farrow & Ball colour I had leftover from a little upcycling project I completed last year. The shade is called Stiffkey Blue, a pretty well known paint colour, thanks to the trend for ‘going dark’ in our interiors that’s all over Pinterest these days.

In typical Farrow & Ball fashion, Stiffkey Blue is described as being ‘naturally dramatic’ and is named after a north Norfolk beach where the mud is this particular shade of blue. Our house was built in the mid ’30s and the front door is original to it, so a lick of paint in what I would term a quite traditional, yet contemporary, shade, would be just what it needed to lift it a little into the present day. In addition, the face of our house is covered in a trailing ivy which turns a beautiful shade of russet red in late summer through to Autumn and I reckoned this shade of blue would look stunning against it – time will tell!

I thought I would guide you briefly through the steps I took to paint the door, because a good old DIY how-to is always helpful, especially at this time of year, when many of us are turning our attention to Spring jobs outdoors.

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A 1970s G plan unit brought up to date

When asked, I often describe my interior style preference as Scandi with a bit of vintage mixed in and it’s funny how when you look back at your Pinterest boards, there is inevitably a visual link between your pinned images that defines your style. If you look at my own Pinterest feed, there’s plenty of old mixed with new, clean lines and varied textures, muted walls with pops of monochrome, a hint of the industrial softened with a vase of flowers or soft wool. Definite Scandinavian influences there, but with a lived in, vintage vibe, too.

In particular, I’m drawn to a bit of Danish midcentury style and love old pieces brought back up to date. I have a pair of Ercol carver chairs that are patiently waiting to be transformed with a length of wool fabric, possibly a soft heather grey herringbone weave or navy blue edged with a striking yellow. I can’t decide which, but their time will come…

It follows then, that when a couple of weeks ago one of my lovely neighbours contacted me to say she thought she had a piece of furniture I’d be interested in, I couldn’t resist popping over for a peek (despite the fact that eldest daughter was imminently heading off to her Spring school concert and we were in the middle of a rather rushed tea – you know that situation when stress levels are kind of high?! – however, some things have to give when it comes to potential new decor finds!!)

For those that know me, I’m never one to turn down a preloved piece of furniture that has every potential to be made loveable once again and this piece was no exception, in fact it was perfect! When I arrived at my neighbour’s house, I was delighted to discover the piece of furniture she was looking rid of was an authentic G plan teak sideboard/wall unit dating back to the 1970s. I just had to take it! Needless to say, my other half immediately deemed it ugly and dated, however thanks to my addiction to the aforementioned Pinterest, I had other ideas…

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Potting Shed Makeover

I have to say, I’m absolutely loving this recent Spring weather we’ve been having here. I just want it to last for weeks and weeks, but alas, here in Northern Ireland, that is rarely the case! On the positive side, however, I suppose it makes me appreciate the settled weather when it’s here and its often short-lived nature motivates me to get outside into the garden and do stuff before those pesky April showers make another appearance…

It was during one such spell of recent dry weather that my husband and I decided to repaint our lovely, but very much flaky and deprived potting shed in the corner of the garden. When I first viewed our house, it was one of the features I instantly fell for, as I could see bags of potential in it and it just oozed such yesteryear charm. At the moment, we use it as a store house for gardening tools and logs, however recently the children and I planted out some seeds in preparation for our veg patch come Summer (more on that soon), as it really does heat up quite nicely on a sunny day. I can also imagine it as a sort of summerhouse – it will eventually require a little work on tidying up the paintwork on the inside, however plonk a chair in there on a sunny day with a coffee and a book and I’ll be in garden heaven.

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A little time out to settle in… and some kitchen thoughts

For those of you who follow the blog regularly, I must apologise for being a little quiet of late. With the house move last month and all the unpacking and general sorting out of life that goes with it, I made a conscious decision to focus on the family and savour our first weeks together in our new home, getting to know some of the neighbours and making endless cups of tea for all the lovely friends and family who have popped around to see us and get ‘the tour’, as is the norm. It has been a lovely first few weeks and I have been enjoying posting a few snippets on Instagram (please have a nosey @dekkobird) of some of the little things I’m enjoying along the way.

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