Perfecting New Pigments

Perfecting New Pigments

Devising additions to a paint palette would be a laborious task if you sat down and were to think ‘we need new colours; now where do we start’. If on the other hand the shades happily present themselves in your consciousness, the task at hand gets an awful lot easier. This is not something that is likely to happen in an instant flash, bang and wallop experience. I wish there was a psychic hot line with a paint guru channelling colours from the ether and shouting ‘its blue darling, BLUE Is the colour that you seek!’. Even if there was such a delightfully helpful service, which blue? Klein? Cobalt? Cornflower?

Sadly there is isn’t, besides, it is best if the colours come first, not the idea of creating additional paint shades for the sake of more hues.

The creation of a new palette happens over time. One sees something; an apple, an old vase or a classic car, and that shade positions itself in the memory as one to come back to. Then a second colour appears and the process starts again. Gradually these colours come into focus and start to resonate with each other.

This is how we added 6 new shades to join the 24 already in the Claybrook paint collection. We didn’t have to add any more colours, but rather felt we must, simply because we were so excited by them.

Claires Lippy paint
Claires Lippy with Kate Blush (Semaphore Celeste floor tiles)

Avocado Brunch paint
Avocado Brunch (Old Havana Miramar floor tiles)

Carly's Loafers paint
Carly's Loafers and Reclaimed Brick (Trousdale floor tiles)

Of course, paint can’t simply be called red or green, so as usual we’ve had a little fun with the naming. Sometimes the name fits the origin of the colour. Claire, our Home Designer, is auburn haired and rocks a bright lip most days. This vibrant red became the focus of our attentions and eventually emerged as Claire’s Lippy, a hue that works brilliantly, particularly as a pop of colour when used on painted furniture pieces. The new stone shade evolved from the team mixing compounds in the lab to get just the right warm tone. The name? well, who doesn’t admire Patsy and Edina from AbFab for fun and frivolity?, So that became Patsy Stone.

The 6 new vegan friendly-shades are all available in hard wearing Eggshell and Emulsion finishes. Up to four free samples are available from the website as usual. Delivery is within 2 working days from order, as all of our paints are conveniently made to order fresh in England for each client.