Paint it black, paint it white.

Be bold and paint your living space in ultra-dramatic mono-chromatic.
What could be simpler than Black & White ?

There's something very refreshing in choosing a scheme of such dramatic opposites. A real chance to create something punchy, something so timeless and classic in the living theatre we call home. It's also an opportunity to wrestle things down to their absolute minimum, no matter what period your pile was built.

The extreme purity of such a scheme perversely draws colour to it. We can't help ourselves; solid black and white wall spaces cry out out for art, objects and mirrors to be placed on or alongside them.
image copyright paintsomecolour 2012 all rights reserved

Even designers like Sue Timney of Timney-Fowler who've made the whole mono-chrome black & white part of their brand are still drawn to use colour to enhance and enliven their look.

There is I think an instinct to add bold primary colour into the mix. Red, yellow, green and blue all flash large in such a space. The smallest item or casually placed accessory grows in stature, taking on an almost gallery like significance.

But why is that? Well in part it's this reductionist scheme that helps our brain park up large chunks of space, it encourages us to focus on the very object in isolation.

Lighting as in any living space is key, after all, head-first down the basement steps isn't much fun, no matter how glamourous the interior from which we've unwittingly launched ourselves.

Well placed down lighters in the ceilings illuminate the runway on which we walk, strategically placed near a pair of opposing mirrors and we see a multiplying of spaces and lights into the darkness. It's high drama and almost mysterious in it's depth.

And nothing could be so easy, could it. All you need to do is order these two simple colours, choose what goes where and crack on with it.

You may though find a small but significant question posed as you order your paint.

"What colour black and what colour white do you want"

It's because these two simple choices aren't actually so black and white after all. The reality is that they are in fact refined colours all of their own, blacks with blue or green or red in. Whites which though at the end of their range are in fact pared-back colours or hues, shades of a much stronger version of themselves, but still colours no less.


As with all the paint colours we ponder on, there's a growing number of choices now available.
Lamp black, bible black, near black, british standards black. The same goes for white and the list is virtually endless.


We still need to choose them with as much care as we do any other colour, they can be warm and cool. They can take on a mood all of their own and I see them as more alike than far apart, they define each other far better than any other colour paring. We use them linguistically too, as a metaphor for clarity and simplicity but they are in fact deeply complex in their make up. And if we don't look carefully we could miss the very beauty that is there to behold.