Dulux Collective Passions – and an Exciting Collaboration!

Exciting things are afoot at Stylist’s Own: eagle-eyed readers will be aware of my love of colour and affinity with Dulux paints – I’ve always found them to give excellent coverage, there is a brilliant range of colours and finishes, and as paint goes, they actually smell pretty good, too. But that’s kind of an aside. And having regularly liaised with their press office whilst creating magazine features and shoots over the years, they very kindly thought of me as they searched for a blogging journo to work with them on a very special upcoming project for Meet the Blogger London, a unique weekend workshop-cum-conference-cum-social for some of Europe’s biggest and brightest interiors and lifestyle bloggers. My mission, which I have very much chosen to accept, is to create a series of blogposts exploring one of their key SS13 trend stories, Collective Passions, then report on my findings in the form of a fifteen minute presentation (yikes!) at the event itself, of which Dulux are a sponsor. No pressure, then…

Luckily the trend itself is a real favourite of mine, and contains a truly scrumptious colour palette. Rather aptly, it’s partly inspired by social media, and the new possibilities it’s created to connect and share ideas. The way we consume trends, images and concepts has changed dramatically in a relatively short space of time thanks to the power of the Internet, as we flock like birds, gathering together and flitting from one look to the next, putting one down as quickly as we pick the next one up.

Inspired by this spontaneous and energetic behaviour, the way we use these colours is almost as important as the colours themselves. ‘Flocking’ – pairing up two or more colours to create rough bands across a wall – perfectly sums up this transient new approach, along with its more disciplined cousin, the stripe.

At first glance, the palette can seem somewhat frenetic, with its bold, attention-grabbing fluro and candy-pastel tones, but is (importantly) kept grounded by chalky whites and warm greys – an equally important element in the mix. As a total package, the palette allows you to be as bold as you dare, mixing bright on bright, or keep things subtle yet lively with swift flashes of colour.

After somewhat excitingly popping all 16 lids open (a moment that always makes me wistfully think back to the colour-reveal moment in Changing Rooms where a floppy-cuffed Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen would try to appease terrified contestants with his wonderfully lurid colour choices), I couldn’t resist having a quick play with all the colours myself. Rather than just paint them on scraps of paper, I decided to multi-task by creating my own bespoke ‘artwork’, based on the colour palette above, to provide a great reference to all these colours and create a lovely visual in itself (I happened to have a spare canvas knocking around from Hobbycraft, left over from a recent shoot). I do love the way it pops out against my dark grey living room walls (also Dulux, natch).

Throughout next week, I will be creating numerous posts inspired by this trend, showing the different ways it can be interpreted for interiors, crafts and beyond. See you there?

{Images: main roomset shots, all courtesy of photographer Emma Lee for Dulux. Other images, all copyright Joanna Thornhill.

Meet the Blogger London is taking place this coming weekend – Saturday 9th to Sunday 10th March, at the ME London hotel near Covent Garden, London. Tickets are still available at the time of writing – click here to book}