Celebrating the Winning Colours by Nature
What do squirrels, beetroot and dragonflies have in common? They all inspired winners of our Colour by Nature competition, who we were delighted to host as part of their prize this summer.
In spring 2020, we launched a competition to celebrate Colour by Nature, our palette of 16 paint shades created in collaboration with the Natural History Museum. As each colour in our collection is found in the natural world, meticulously recorded in the ground-breaking Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours, we challenged children across the globe to head out into the great outdoors and find their own colour. We received thousands of fantastic entries but after careful consideration, Nude by Nature, Squirrel’s Nibble, Dirty Beetroot, Velociraptor Red and Embrassez-moi were our favourite five colours and their creators were crowned our winners.
Each winner is now the proud owner of a 15L tin of their very own Farrow & Ball paint colour, which have already been put to good use transforming bedrooms, cupboards and even a beehive! To top off their prize, we also invited the winners to England for the summer holiday trip of a lifetime. During their trip, they went behind the scenes on a tour of the Farrow & Ball factory, spent a morning with Charlotte Cosby (our Head of Creative) photographing their paint colours to create their own advertising campaign and took part in lots of colourful crafts. They also got to explore the Natural History Museum with a private breakfast and exclusive access to Dippy the Diplodocus. Plus, they even got back out into nature for a treetop adventure and enjoyed a stay in the beautiful Dorset countryside.
Read on for the story behind each winning entry:
Squirrel’s Nibble
A taste of the great outdoors. This colour was created by a brother and sister duo from Norway, who spotted the yellow wood of a tree branch after a squirrel had bitten into it.
Dirty Beetroot
This purple colour was inspired by the singular colour of beetroot, a rich, deep and vibrant purple. With a quirky name that lives up to the Farrow & Ball reputation, this entry from the UK was a worthy winner.
Nude by Nature
A blue grey neutral, this entry from Germany takes its inspiration from something truly special. An intricate and delicate nest created by wasps, left empty once the inhabitants moved on to a new home.
Velociraptor Red
Despite the name, this entry was not inspired by a sighting of dinosaurs themselves — thankfully — but the blazing red of a Torch Ginger flower. The flower reminded the Canadian winner of the way people in films ward away danger with fiery torches.
Embrasse-moi
An ever-so delicate moment inspired this bold, bright red from our French winner: a dragonfly pausing for rest on the tip of a bud in a pose that almost looks like a kiss.
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