Classic blue is Pantone's colour of 2020. About time too! We’ve been expecting, really wanting to see blue as a big colour trend for a little while. So we are going to show you 6 ways to style with blue to create vintage-inspired rooms. As many you know blue has been a favourite colour of ours since we started 14 years ago. Our blue furniture and interiors come from Rajasthan, the desert regions of north-west India. We buy a lot of furniture from the ancient city of Jodhpur aka ‘the blue city’. Jodhpur is famed for its blue old city walls, blue houses and blue interiors and furniture is also painted blue. . It’s clean and elegant and so easy to incorporate into your home.
So how can you style your home with blue?
A Blue KItchen
The kitchen is the heart of the home, so it's the natural place to want to start. A blue kitchen would mean blue kitchen cabinets and cupboards. There's a considerable commitment to invest in a fully fitted kitchen. If you do then navy blue is the colour many interior designers are in love with at the moment, but any hue would work. Think blue cabinets and cupboards with exposed brick-work walls and sanded wooden or flagstone floors. If you're on a budget and don't want to rip out an old kitchen, then painting you old shaker style cabinets is perfectly good. Do it yourself or get an expert in for the day.
We cannot forget the going for a bolder use of vivid blue with a deeper blue used on the walls and on the cabinets. It's bold and not for the faint-hearted. Try Farrow and Ball's irk navy - Stiffkey Blue - - https://www.farrow-ball.com/paint-colours/stiffkey-blue - If that's too intense then a paler blue give a more soothing natural look.
Pastel blue walls or even ceiling allow you to then mix other pastel shades into other parts of the kitchen.
A kitchen we designed and fitted
Eclectic Vintage Kitchens
If you have or want a more eclectically styled kitchen then ou can mix blue free-standing cabinets with other colours. The good thing with
free-standing cupboards is you can swap one piece for another, so you can bring in a blue cupboard or wall cabinet while leaving everything else as it is. An eclectic kitchen is one that can evolve over time. The kitchen above shows a combination of styles, colours, textures. There are eight different types of wood, painted and natural woods, old stone, bare metals and mixed together.
If a painting an entire room blue is a step too far look to create smaller areas or pockets of ‘blueness’. So vibrant blue textiles here or a faded blue cupboard or armoire set against a satin grey polished concrete floor. Go even more micro with a collection of blue antique medicine bottles in a blue vintage bathroom cabinet or a stack of small vintage tins with tropical house plants.
Vintage tins are the perfect place to store those really small items you would usually throw into a drawer and forget about. The best ones are those with colourful and interesting graphics. They can be stacked in mini piles. Perfect for kids stuff too. Pencils, pens, rubbers, Pokemon cards...
Mixing Blue & Other Colours
The colour green is still a very popular colour from 2019 and green and blue can be pair together especially if your using plants. So create clusters of potted house plants rather than single pots around a room or space. Use different pot heights and shapes to create height and depth. Mix textures with concrete faded vintage terracotta pots with chipped edges and smooth geometric curved pots with succulents and cacti.
Blue Bedroom
Creating a blue bedroom with a mix of other colours is not tricky. Like our suggestions for kitchens, we love eclectic styled spaces. So for a bedroom mix styles, so no single one dominates. There really are no rules. Experiment. Styles the pieces and furniture you love. We have used a small
blue vintage cupboard as a bedside cabinet. Another larger cupboard is used as a storage cupboard for clothes.
Blue Storage Inspiration
In this turquoise and
pale blue vintage cabinet without glass, we’ve simply displayed plants with books and curios. A good idea if you don’t have a lot of surface space for plants.
A small
blue kitchen rack shelving unit with built-in-compartment, that could be used anywhere in the home. We think it would look best in a child's room for their favourite books and momentoes or in a bathroom.
An
antique blue Indian wedding chest from south-east India. We love time-worn painted furniture, especially wooden chests. There's something intriguing about a locked boxed! Old chests can be used as blanket boxes at the end of a bed, as coffee tables, as a hall chest for sitting on to put shoes on. We've got hundreds of wooden chests, boxes and trunks. Only a few are blue.
Old Blue Doors & Room Panels
This
antique Indian blue wall panel with doors could be used to divide a larger space into a bright and colourful room into a magical space full of faded colours, patterns and textures. It could be simply attached to a wall to give the impression of going into an outside terrace or the doors could really lead to another room / part of a room. We think it would work in a garden room / summer house or terrace.
This 1930s
Art Deco wooden door from the north western Indian state of Gujarat mixes bold blue panels with geometric shapes and patterns.
If you can't make a real doorway then consider a false door. Just fix a pair of
old large blue doors to a wall to give the look of an old door.
and we’re lucky to be able to acquire a blue interior from the amazing fortified desert city. Not to boasting or anything, but we did have a sneaky suspicion that the Pantone Colour of the Year 2020 was going to be blue. It felt like it was time for a blue. Their 2020 colour is called Classic Blue, and it’s just that: a classic blueWe hope we have given you some inspiration for adding blue to your home whether by painting walls, ceilings, using a more intense blue or a softer lighter pastel blue. A blue kitchen is a good starting point whether an entire blue fitted kitchen, repainting older units or adding free-standing cupboards to an existing eclectic kitchen or starting to project to create an eclectic space. Visit our website to see our wide range of blue and painted
vintage furniture and interiors. If you live in or near Fife pop in for a chat, cup of tea and a chocolate digestive!
Image credit: Benjamin Moore
