For The Love Of Green
One of the most enjoyable parts of decorating and personalising a home is creating a colour palette that is distinctly yours! Playing with colours and creating a palette that’s unique to us is something that we have always had so much fun with. Whether that was back in 2012, DIY painting second-hand furniture with our favourite shades of Resene paint (at the time-a bright turquoise!) Or more permanent fixtures in our current home, like our wardrobes and wall colours.
If you follow me over on Instagram or you’re a regular reader of this journal, you won’t be surprised to hear that my all-time favourite colour for the home is green! Green is a truly timeless colour and much like indoor plants, I find it has such a calming vibe, reminding me of being outside in nature.
So, as a homage to my favourite colour, I decided to highlight some of the ways we’ve used green in past and present spaces. Hopefully this can help give you a little interior inspiration if you’ve been thinking of using a statement colour in your own home!
Middle Earth Tiles in Sterling Moss
One of my favourite pops of green to this day is the splashback subway tiles in our previous kitchen. When we were ready to renovate the kitchen in this home, I knew that I wanted to incorporate these tiles somehow. I initially spotted them at Egmont Street Eatery back in the day and fell in love with both the colour and glossy textured look of these tiles. We decided to make them a true statement by placing hidden LED lighting under the bench top, turning these tiles into their own light feature in the evening.
Although we no longer get to enjoy these tiles ourselves, I like to imagine that whoever is living in that home now gets as much pleasure out of them as we did!
Bedroom Wardrobe Cabinetry
Our bedroom was always a space where we struggled to settle on a distinct vibe and colour palette. Initially trying to make sense of the metallic patterned wallpaper that the previous owners had installed had us stumped. After a lot of trial and error and swapping out pillows and bedspreads, we decided that it was better to keep things simple and have the wallpaper removed entirely. This left us with a blank slate and a dark green wardrobe seemed like the perfect way to bring some colour back into the space.
We wanted the shade to be as close to our bathroom vanity as possible (Resene 'Jurassic’) and although at the time it felt like a slightly risky choice, I’m so glad that we went with green. Despite it being quite a dark shade and taking up most of the wall, it creates an incredibly soothing and serene vibe, perfect for the bedroom. It also allowed us to create a more “us” palette with the bedding we used and the art that we brought into the space and now our bedroom finally feels resolved!
Dining Room Walls
When we first moved into our current home, the dining space was painted a dark shade of grey. Whilst this wasn’t a colour we would have picked for ourselves, we liked how the darker walls made the space feel moody and cosy, as well as separating it from the adjoining kitchen and living room.
When we were finally ready to start making some braver aesthetic changes to the home, we decided to re-paint the dining room. I was initially inspired by a green bag from a second-hand store in Brisbane, proof that inspiration truly can come from anywhere! We managed to get an almost exact colour match at Resene, settling on the shade ‘Paddock’. We wanted to keep the darker, more moody vibe that we had been enjoying with the previous paint colour, but we loved how the dark green made the trees outside the dining room windows really pop!
Green Mossy Rug
Before we were feeling bold enough to splash green paint on wardrobe doors and walls, we still loved incorporating the colour through soft furnishings and indoor plants. Our sitting room at the back of the house looks out to the garden, which is full of rich shades of green, so dotting this colour throughout the space really brought it together. One of my favourite pieces in our home is this gorgeous circular rug from Stacks. It has such a beautiful, organic feel to it and the mossy green pattern adds incredible texture to this back living room space.
By adding small pops of a colour into our home, we were really able to build our own palette organically and decide what sparked joy for us by living with a colour before fully committing to it in a more permanent way. If you’re curious to experiment with some bolder colours in your own home, I would really recommend using this method, a couple of pillows and a rug are a lot less scary than a big bucket of paint!
Whilst I’m definitely more drawn to darker shades of green for our home, I still find a lot of inspiration from the ways others have used shades of green in their own homes! Here are some more examples of creative ways to use green in a space…
