A lick of paint can make all the difference to a room that’s looking tired and uninspiring – but gone are the days when shades of white, cream and magnolia ruled the roost in the paint colour charts.
These days the choices come with such quirky names as Arsenic (a jadey-green) and Dead Salmon (greyish pink), both from Farrow and Ball. Then there’s Nacho Cheese (orangey-yellow) from Benjamin Moore, and Pretty Ugly (a sort of mushy pea green) from Backdrop Paint.
But perhaps the craziest (although cleverly-inspired) moniker comes from the up-and-coming UK paint company Lick, who created a red based on everyone’s favourite sauce, tomato ketchup.
Their limited edition paint shade Red HTK 57 (a nod to Heinz 57 varieties) was created in collaboration with Heinz – and customers were keen to get their paintbrushes into one of the 570 made-to-order tins of tomato red paint.
Tomato ketchup on the walls isn’t to everyone’s taste, of course – but bolder colours like red are certainly making a comeback in the interiors market as people look for comfort and cosiness, especially in winter, and typically, for sitting and dining rooms.
When it comes to using bold reds such as HTK 57, balance it out with furniture and accessories featuring natural oak, sisal, or jute, and use complementary colours such as light blues, teals and creamy whites in soft furnishings.
Even if you find wall-to-wall ketchup a bit too much to stomach, red can be used in smaller doses as an energising accent colour: perhaps to paint kitchen cupboards or a dresser, upcycle old dining chairs, add a pop of colour to a radiator, or even just paint some picture frames.
The colour experts at Lick who created their HTK 57 say they deliberately softened the red with black, yellow and blue pigments so it doesn’t overwhelm a space, and can make up 30-60% of a colour scheme without feeling like too much.