Hello
Welcome to Paint Colours with Jules.
I’m Jules and I help people pick paint colours for their homes.
I am a Harpenden and St Albans local, mother and cat lover.
Colour is therapy to me and my home is my sanctuary.
My love of colour started out with fabrics, quilting and Liberty. From the archives to the annual collections, the vivid colours never fail to evoke a mood and on a dull winters day, my fabric collection is my sunshine.
I have personal and professional experience of how a space focussed on the needs of its’ inhabitants’ can be life-changing, and that it doesn’t have to cost the earth.
I’ve been building my knowledge (and samples shed) of paint colours for 13 years, but it was 6 years ago that my experience went from interest to intuition when my husband had surgery on his eyes for failing vision.
Whilst his vision returned, his experience of light and colour changed, and so did our lives. Our priority became about what felt right, for our needs, and the challenge became about how to make the whole sensory experience favourable. And it’s now how I live and work.
Paint colours are the largest canvas in our homes and often have the biggest impact on a space. Much like the weather has on our mood. Whether or not we have an idea of how we want a space to look, my perspective is that the needs and ‘feel’ run the show and that’s where I start.
What tempts us in the shop or online doesn’t always work with the reality at home but if we really love something, that’s a good place to start and something that can be worked with to find the bigger picture.
I am here to help with that bigger picture.
My Style
We all have a style or colour preference, even if we’re not aware of it, and whilst we all have our style ‘best’, we also all have our default, for our homes and our lives.
Getting clear on why they are, as well as what they are, can help in figuring out what will work best for us in the long run.
As with most people, my style is a mix of influences shaped over periods and experiences of my life.
As a general rule, I like warm over cool; in colour, texture and materials; which means I tend to favour wood over glass, ceramic over concrete and greige over grey. This is not to say that I don’t use cooler colours and materials, and I am a fan of mixing the two together, but as a general rule, I’m more in to cosy and warm over cucumber cool. And my ideas will likely reflect that.
My style has grown mostly from the homes and places I have decorated and spent the most amount of time in. I would say my biggest style influences are; modern-cottage, modern Georgian, alpine and Southern Californian.
Home of My Style
I was Born in US to British parents who moved back to Harpenden when I was 2; with 3 kids and a container of American garage sale, furniture. My parents were DIYers, second-hand furniture shoppers and trend haters; mum could be found tiling a bathroom and upholstering a sofa and dad turned his hand to everything else. Our home was 70’s English / country garden meets mid-west America - and it hasn’t changed much since. It was home and I only got to choose my wall colour at 16 (which was a choice of blue’s which I matched to the light of the room)
My parents met and worked their whole careers in travel. We holidayed every year in Greece and were often lucky enough to go on holidays twice a year (because back in the day their work perks were really good). Each holiday came with it’s own product tour of the hotels in the region, and subsequently my sister and I ended up in Travel Product jobs for many years. To this day, my excitement for a hotel interior is unmatched even by my Rightmove stalking.
My parents loved everything about Greece; especially the traditional and uncomfortable, woven taverna chairs. I still love it and have always been inspired by the materials, textures and fabrics more than the amazing blue hues, that I love but go there for. My mother and sister still continue to paint everything white and blue for the love of it.
When I was old enough to choose where to live, I went abroad and spent the winters in the alps. Different alpine countries have a different style and design but they all mix of the ultra modern with the oldie-worldie, with extensive wood craftsmanship. There were textures galore, cosy lighting and the only bright white to see was in the snow (and there was more of that back then). But after 6 years I spent too many nights watching Notting Hill and Pride and Prejudice; I went for the cosy and returned for the British.
I met my husband soon after my return to UK and spent much of our first year together in his flat in the Barbican Estate. I was not a fan (of the Barbican buildings), initially. They felt imposing and oppressive; it’s not called brutalist for nothing. But inside was a different story; I loved the feel of permanence and community; albeit a strange collision of city workers and creatives. Many of the homes are still as they were originally designed and built in the 70’s and it has a permanent place in me.
We bought our first place together in North London. We looked at 55+ flats and found ‘the one’; with Georgian sash windows, period features and high ceilings. Triple tick. To this day I still can’t match the light in that place and when there’s that much light you can play with some really vivid colour. We loved it and loved doing it up. But we moved out of London to find peace and space…
When we moved to our still current cottage home, I was working for tourism in California and travelling out there a fair bit. My office, full of women mostly in the same time of life, was abuzz with travel frolics, fashion, stories and a love of California style. I felt lucky enough to spend time in a myriad of places with a cocktail of people and I fell in love with California style. There’s a Mediterranean feel to it, with woody hints and a 70’s nod. It’s like a fusion of the styles I love.