Using Colour - tips and tricks

Using Colour

Colour does not have to mean making a room feel loud.

Often the most successful interiors use colour in a quieter, more layered way — through walls, upholstery, timber, artwork and objects that sit together rather than compete. It is one of the reasons antiques are so useful when building a colour scheme. Old woods, faded textiles, leather, brass and painted finishes already contain variation, so they soften stronger colours and stop a room feeling too considered.

At the moment, there are three combinations we are particularly drawn to.

Tobacco & Ochre

Tobacco and ochre are warm without becoming overly sweet. Together they create rooms that feel settled almost immediately.

Tobacco can come through in dark walnut, mahogany, old leather or a deep brown wall colour, while ochre introduces the lift — perhaps through upholstery, artwork, a cushion or one painted piece. The contrast works because both colours have an earthy quality to them.

This is also an exceptionally good palette for antiques. Brown furniture can sometimes disappear against a completely neutral interior, whereas ochre brings out the warmth in old timber and makes the variations in its surface much more noticeable. A piece such as our 19th century simulated rosewood bobbin armchair already brings that dark tobacco tone into a room; pairing it with an ochre textile would immediately give it a more contemporary context. 

Within LANA, Grano is our natural starting point for the ochre side of the scheme. It appears across all designs, Ondulata, Spigato, Bocollo and Zisa, allowing you to choose whether you want the colour to arrive as a stripe, a large herringbone or something more graphic. Explore the LANA collection. 

We particularly like this combination in dining rooms and sitting rooms, where the warmth becomes richer as the light drops in the evening.

Olive & Moss

Green is one of the easiest ways of bringing colour into a room without it feeling like a deliberate colour statement.

Olive and moss sit particularly comfortably around antiques because they reference colours we are used to seeing alongside old materials — aged bronze, landscape paintings, worn textiles and the natural variation within timber.

The key is not to match the greens too closely. A darker moss wall with a more yellow olive chair, for example, gives a room much more depth than repeating one shade throughout.

Our Loch turned wood and lacquered side table in Fern is a good example of how a relatively small piece can introduce green amongst more traditional furniture. The turned form feels familiar and slightly classical, while the lacquered finish changes its character completely. TallBoy Interiors

You can then continue that colour through cloth. Within LANA, Bosco is the obvious foundation. Using it on an armchair or sofa creates a large, tactile block of green rather than simply introducing the colour through accessories. Both Ondulata and the wider LANA collection include Bosco among their colourways. TallBoy Interiors

This combination is especially effective where there is plenty of oak, walnut or pine. Green makes the warmth of those woods feel richer, while the timber prevents the scheme becoming too cool or botanical.

Oxblood & Burgundy

This is the strongest of the three, but perhaps the most rewarding.

Oxblood and burgundy can give even a relatively simple room a sense of richness and permanence. Rather than treating red as an accent colour, we like the idea of allowing several variations of it to sit together: deep burgundy walls, an oxblood leather chair, a faded red within a rug or painting, then quieter neutral upholstery elsewhere.

Antiques are particularly useful here because aged reds tend to be much softer than new ones. Old mahogany and walnuts develop darker patches and warm brown undertones, which means it rarely feels too bright. Our 18th century Spanish walnut table is exactly the sort of piece that could anchor this scheme, the original untouched walnut already carries the variation and patina that makes a richer palette work.

Pairing timber with soft furnishings are how you bring a room together. Rather than upholstering everything else in another red, we would use the LANA collection to temper it. Terra works particularly well because it sits somewhere between rust, earth and red, allowing it to bridge antique leather and a deeper burgundy wall. Terra is available across all LANA designs. LANA collection

Add dark timber, aged brass and perhaps a tapestry or old painting and the result can feel wonderfully enveloping without becoming overly formal.

Bringing it together

The thing all three combinations have in common is that they work through layering rather than matching.

Choose a wall colour first, then allow furniture and textiles to introduce neighbouring shades rather than exact repetitions. An antique does not need to correspond perfectly with the fabric beside it. In fact, the slight difference in tone is usually what makes the room feel collected rather than decorated.

Our LANA collection was developed with exactly this sort of interior in mind. Its palette takes cues from natural and mineral colours, including grain, forest, stone and earth tones, so the fabrics sit comfortably alongside aged timber, bronze, stone and antique furniture rather than fighting against them. TallBoy Interiors

Colour is often what turns a collection of individually good pieces into a room.

And it does not necessarily take much — one painted wall, one strong piece of upholstery and an antique with the right colour and patina can be enough to establish the whole direction.