When Patrick Met Bea: A New Look for a Victorian Home

How do I make this house feel like home? It’s the age-old question and one everyone has asked themselves at some point or another, including Bea. Looking around her home, a charming Victorian house, she wanted to find a way to reflect her and her young family in the décor a little more. Who better to step in and lend a hand, than our resident colour connoisseur and Brand Ambassador, Patrick O’Donnell?

Bea knew she wanted colour — music to Patrick’s ears — so during the Colour Consultancy, he considered the light, architecture and furnishing of each room, as well as how Bea planned to use them, to create a vibrant, playful and still refined colour palette. The result is truly something special – possibly one of our all-time favourites.

The Kitchen and Dining Area

The kitchen is the heart of the home. And in this case, it’s also the heart of the colour scheme. Patrick and Bea started here to give this all-important space the attention it deserves.

“We started in the kitchen,” explains Patrick, “which probably feels unconventional as I usually start in the hall when transforming a house, as these spaces often dictate the colours in each room transitioning off. But this time, I started in the kitchen with these two bold greens, Yeabridge Green and Bancha, and they ended up dictating how we used colour in the other spaces.”

The finished space­­ – painted in our super durable, stain-resistant Modern Emulsion — is fresh and cheerful, perfect for breakfasts, dinner parties and midnight snacks alike.

Sitting Room

Creating Bea’s dream family sitting room all started with choosing the right wall colour. One that felt relaxing, balanced the bold kitchen colours and complemented the period architecture of the house without, as Patrick describes it, ‘feeling fusty or constrained by its Victorian origins’. A tall order but luckily Patrick had an ideal shade from our Archive up his sleeve: Chinese Blue.  

“Using Chinese Blue in the sitting room felt like a good counterpoint to the kitchen colours because it has a similar weight,” says Patrick, “but it has a slightly crisper feel – ideal for the sitting room’s space and light.

“Bea and her husband have such a great eye for furniture, so it was also really important we chose a colour that allowed their pieces to register in the space, instead of being swamped.”

Hallway

This newly transformed hallway may seem simple compared to the colourful schemes elsewhere, but there’s a very good reason for that, as Patrick explains: “By erring on bolder options in most of the spaces, we both agreed that the hall, stairs and landing needed to ‘breathe’ rather than be an extension of the bolder palette.”

Pointing on the walls with a Green Smoke accent stripe creates a calming complement to the other areas in the home.

Bathrooms

These freshly painted bathrooms are bold, beautiful and bursting with colour. We often say that if you’re hesitant about bright colours, bathrooms are the perfect place to experiment. And while Bea certainly isn’t hesitant, these spectacular spaces are great examples of why we say that.

“I think the Danish Lawn and Inchyra Blue bathroom is my favourite space,” admits Patrick, “but at the same time, there’s something so intrinsically warming about India Yellow. It just feels like the ultimate switch-off zone. The idea of having a leisurely, candle-lit soak in that room – I mean who wouldn’t want that?”

With those steamy soaks in mind, Patrick chose durable, mould-protected Modern Emulsion for the walls and Modern Eggshell for the woodwork — our recommended finishes for moisture-prone bathrooms and kitchens.

Bedroom and Nursery

In these sleep spaces, Patrick employed one of our favourite tricks for tackling tricky shaped ceilings and creating an ultimate oasis of calm – colour drenching.

Taking a warm colour, Pink Ground for the guest bedroom and Setting Plaster for the nursery, across the walls, skirting board and ceiling removes harsh contrasts and hides where the walls meet the ceiling and floor. As a result, the room feels bigger, more open and more calming. It’s a favourite for a reason.