How I Created A Cosy Sitting Room By Colour Drenching In The Same Warm Neutral

I had wanted to paint our sitting room in a warm, soft brown neutral tone for a while; after a 3 cm gap in our guttering drenched the wall on the front of our house and blew all the interior plaster, it was the encouragement that I needed to redecorate this space!

*A gutter leak drenched our wall and blew all the interior plaster over Christmas.*

Once the gutter was fixed, I left the wall a few months to dry out before repairing the plaster by giving it a skim. During the ‘waiting for the wall to dry’ period, I occupied myself with a million soft brown paint sample tins, trying to decide on the perfect paint shade for this room.

*I tried and tested many different soft brown paint sample options before picking Stone V by Paint & Paper Library.*

I had recently decorated the adjoining TV room with a botanical wallpaper, so I knew this room had to be painted in a neutral tone to balance out everything that was going on in the connected space. As the sitting room has all the wood panelling and tall ceilings, it has a very traditional, London townhouse feel about it and I really wanted to embrace that by using a heritage-feel paint colour.

sitting room decor makeover — *I was delighted with the perfectly smooth finish that Paint & Paper Library Paint gave my walls.* *Click here* *to read how I previously added this wall panelling in the room.*

After a visit to the boutique central London hotel Henry's Townhouse last year (which embraces the interiors of the 18th Century), I fell in love with a soft, warm brown that adorned the walls of the entrance; the colour felt warm, inviting and historical - everything that I wanted to encapsulate in this sitting room at home.

I set about trying a number of light brown paint samples to find my perfect tone. I wanted a soft brown that didn’t have overt yellow, green, or pink undertones, while at the same time wasn’t ‘too brown’ (I felt that I may regret a deep chocolate shade, which isn’t my usual style). After much consideration, it was Stone V by Paint & Paper Library that turned out to be the winning colour. I was also keen to use a shade by this paint brand as they recently reformulated their Architects’ Matt paint finish to also be used on wood and metal in a ‘one tin does it all’ formula. As I was going to colour drench the room and paint the walls, coving, skirting, fireplace, windows, bookcase and shutters all in Stone V, it was helpful not to have to use separate tins of different finishes (which can be expensive and wasteful). Architects’ Matt also has a built-in primer, so I did not need to pre-coat any area first - saving me a lot of time in this generously-sized room!

As well as painting the entire room in a new colour from its previous grey hue, I updated my IKEA Billy Bookcase hack that I first built when I originally decorated this room. This hack has given me loads of storage and display space, but I now wanted to replace the old wallpaper lining the back and add a bit of extra height on the top to make it look more aesthetically pleasing and less ‘boxy’. I built a frame from timber to sit on top of the bookcase and added mouldings and trim, as well as relining the bookcase with a textured wallpaper (I’ll share more details on what I did in a separate, forthcoming blog post).

I also colourwashed this bookcase in Stone V (using the waster-based eggshell over the Architects’ Matt, as the shelving gets a lot of usage) to match the rest of the room.

I put back into the room pretty much the same furniture as I had before (apart from a few new accessories) as nothing needed replacing. I also took great joy in arranging and displaying my collection of white ceramics on the new-look Billy!