There is a clever feature on the card which we have have described as ‘flying paint chips’.

Until you get your hands on one, it’s not immediately obvious what this means, but it’s a really neat way for you to compare paint colours to fabrics, wallpapers, and other paint colours – without forcing you to see them surrounded by a white background. Here’s a video to whet your appetite:

As always, the paint chips are our actual paint (not a matched ink – so they are 100% accurate for colour and finish), and we’ll post you one for free – just fill in your details here and we’ll pop one in the post along with our full product brochure.

Happy colour choosing!

If you just love valentines day, romance doesn’t need to be confined to one day per year. Create a lasting effect by decorating your bedroom in a romantic style. Paint your walls in a lovely Shrimp Pink colour and maybe add some contrast with our wonderful 50′s Magnolia paint.  Add to the fantastic look created by your new paint colours by accessorising with delicate silk cushions, bedding and that old favourite – candles.

We’ve picked a couple of our favourite examples here:

10 Bouquet Bonbon

Shades of white - Wall and Shutters: Tracery 11 Floor: Normandy Grey 79 Table: Salix 99

Living Room With Ornate Mirror - Main wall: French Grey Dark 163 Panelling: French Grey 113 Fireplace: French Grey Pale 161

Decorative corner- Front wall, panelling and moulding details: Adventurer 7

Bathroom with traditional bath - Main Wall: Rolling Fog Dark 160 Bath: Rolling Fog 163 Panelling: Rolling Fog Pale 158

Bedroom with wooden floors - Wallpaper: Bedford Square ECRU Main wall: Portland Stone Pale 155 Side table and fireplace: Portland Stone Dark 157 Peg rail: Portland Stone Deep 156

Kitchen in pale green - Main wall: Pearl Colour Dark 169 Window seat, back door and kitchen unit: Pearl Colour 100 Table and bench: Pearl Colour Pale 167

Moulin Noir coffee table from Lover's lounge

Kinky Boudoir Louis from Ultimate Louis

Swallows in Love Cushion from Megan Quinton

Blackboard Heart Name Place Holders from Nordic House

Winter

January

Source: Apartment Therapy

January continued very much in the same vain as 2009 with neutral colour schemes and a minimalist approach to furnishings. This was in part down to the economic downturn as home owners looked to use more conservative decorating techniques. This helped keep costs down and hold the value of the home. January was certainly not a month for bold statements.

As predicted, by many, chunky, clunky furniture that takes up lots of space were replaced with more refined and scaled down furniture. Chairs were a prime example as small furnished chairs sold in their thousands. These not only looked great but also saved money.

It comes as no surprise, but as mentioned in our 2010 predictions, grey became an extremely popular paint colour in the early part of 2010. Grey is perfect for apartments and clever lighting can help deliver both a stylish and warm feeling. Apartment Therapy featured an article about grey paint colours during this period also.

February

source: ColourLovers

In February we started to see the first signs of change. Soft pastel colours became increasingly popular. You only have to look at ColourLovers trends for this period to see the type of looks people were interested in. Light tones and accent walls could be seen in many homes.

The change in wall colours was not the only thing that changed in February. Fabrics became particularly popular with more and more people turning to fabric sofas. These went well with the new and bolder wall colours people were using. Fabrics are great during these winter months as they can be used to make a room feel much warmer. As a result people bought fabric sofas and installed new tightly patterned fabric curtains.

Spring

March

source: Apartment Therapy

March this year was a particularly popular time of year for renovating bathrooms and kitchens. Many bloggers commentated on the latest trends which included accessories and blue paint shades. In the kitchen designers and home owners started to make clever use of shelving and freestanding units. These created extra space and looked great.

Bathrooms always sell well around this time of year and are constantly evolving. It is probably the fastest moving area of interior design with so many styles and colour schemes. Bold colours traditionally haven’t worked well in bathrooms but with the flexibility of such spaces these became very popular in February 2010. Designers were also using accessories to create small features throughout bathrooms.

April

source: Little Greene

In spring design trends moved towards floral patterns and subtle colour tones. Fabric based furniture remained popular while white and purple paints were used. Designers also started to make more use of neutral yet soft carpets throughout the home. This is in stark contrast to 2009 were hard flooring was more popular.

Here at the Little Greene we saw a sharp increase in sales in our floral wallpaper range during this period. Floral patterns can work well in a range of rooms including hallways and bathrooms. You will mainly find these styles in more traditional houses.

May

source: Trend Hunter

Greens came back in a big way during May. Spring is a time that we often associated with natural colours such as white, green and purple. These are not only neutral but help provide a colour scheme that will be to most people’s tastes. This is particularly important when coming to sell your home.

In an unexpected return room dividers saw a resurgence in May 2010. The help of innovative designs and clever use of space made these not only functional but also desirable to home owners. Trend Hunter, who report on trends, even ran an entire piece on this and retailers such as IKEA began to sell then once again.

Summer

June

source: Wattrus

June marked the beginning of the summer and saw a continuation of many of the trends present in May. Again neutral colours and soft furnishings were the order of the day. On a separate yet surprising note geek chic became very popular during this time. Teenagers scrambled to get hold of geek imprinted cushions, wallpapers and desk accessories.

July

source: Apartment Therapy

With summer almost in full swing designers turned their attention to bedrooms. Floral patterns and light colours remained popular as designers tried to maximise the amount of sunlight coming into the home. It’s a time when we remove our thick winter bed quilts and bring in nice, airy and light bed sheets. Apartment Therapy put together a great piece on this during July.

Painted floors also became popular again for a short time. White floor paint is the single most popular colour for floors and can provide a stylish and affordable flooring solution. This approach is often used in bathrooms.

August

source: Flickr - Massminto354

In August bedroom and bathroom decorating continued to be popular. Since it was summer many designers took inspiration from the garden and bought many elements from the garden inside. House plant sales increased significantly and kitchen accessories were a must.

Home accessories as a whole became popular. Some innovative laptop pods were launched. These were perfect for people who shared a home.

Autumn

September

source: Floormats

Neutral colours have always been popular but there are ways to brighten up a room during those cold winter and autumn nights. In September bold and bright colours became the colours of choice. Strong warm reds were particularly popular. Many designers and home owners bought bright accessories and fabrics to offset their neutral wall colours and flooring.

During this month rugs sold particularly well and at the Little Greene we experienced a rise in sales for accent wall wallpapers. These are both great ways to create warmth within a room and make a real statement. This trend continued throughout the winter months.

October

source: Trend Bible

Fabric furnishings featured consistently throughout 2010 however in October these furnishing often came in bright, mixed and bold colours. Patterns varied much more widely and designers were no longer confined to conservative looks. These bright new colours promoted positivity and optimism and were used on everything from cushions to dining room chairs.

November

sourec: Flickr - xJavierx

Towards the latter end of 2010 bright colours continued to perform well. The lounge became the key focus for many and sofas sold particularly well during this month. The contemporary look and colours such as grey performed well in this month. Many home owners decorated their dining rooms during this time in preparation for Christmas.

December

In December people’s attention turns to Christmas and entertaining guests. As a result vast amounts are spent on accessories and decorations. The lounge is particularly important and lighting typically sells well this time of year. Floor standing lamps reportedly sold well in December.

This concludes our roundup of 2010 interior design trends. We have seen both subtle and bold changes in many areas and this trend is set to continue in 2011. Don’t forget to keep an eye out for our predictions for 2011 and leave us a comment if you think there is anything we should add.

We will be making a special donation from every can of paint sold during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, October 2010.

Specially labelled cans will be sold via the internet and UK stockists for the month of October. We’re committing to give 15p from the sale of every can of paint sold during the month and customers will have the opportunity to select the charity of their choice to determine how the money generated will be spent.

Customers will be able to vote for their preferred charity on-line on our website using a special landing page which will be live from 1st October through to the end of November.

At the conclusion of the month, the money generated will be calculated and then shared out proportionately according to the on-line voting.

Major breast cancer charity partners have joined up with us in an effort to raise awareness and provide much needed resources for breast cancer research and support networks, and our customers will be able to see the work done by these important agencies, as we’ll be adding links to their profiles at the start of the month.

David Mottershead, our MD comments “We are delighted to support such an important issue, one that is close to our hearts at Little Greene; this is part of a long-term commitment to help breast cancer sufferers and the associated research to beat this disease. I am confident the programme will be a success.”

More details to follow, so keep an eye on the blog for updates!

Whether you want to liven up your masonry or give your front door a facelift, Little Greene has just the paint for you! With over 160 mouth-watering shades and a variety of environmentally-friendly finishes to choose from, you can give your home a makeover in an afternoon!

And you can do it with a clear conscience too! Little Greene’s practical and hard-wearing oil-based paints – perfect for exterior woodwork and metal work, including front doors and garden furniture – have been reformulated to give them a greener appeal. Without compromising on appearance, ease of application or durability, much of the solvent in all Little Greene oil-based paints has been replaced with naturally-occurring vegetable oils, which are both environmentally-friendly and truly sustainable.

The low-sheen oil-eggshell still has its timeless, sophisticated flat finish whilst the oil-gloss remains as brilliant as ever.

And for walls, Little Greene now makes an eco-friendly Exterior Masonry Paint specially formulated to keep your house and garden looking smart for up to 15 years.

Little Greene’s Exterior Masonry Paint is easy to apply and quick to dry. It has a smooth, matt finish that resists dirt retention, and with such a beautiful range of shades, there is a paint for walls everywhere, from townhouses to cottage gardens.

Strike while it’s hot! Consult your Little Greene colour cards today, and give your home the beauty treatment it deserves!

Creating the perfect summer retreat, where you can curl up with a book, enjoy al fresco dining or simply watch the world go by, couldn’t be easier with our environmentally-friendly water-based paints.

They cover exceptionally well, dry quickly and have no odour, so you can give your garden room a facelift in an afternoon. Then all you have to do is stand back, appreciate your handiwork…and enjoy!

Alternatively, give your garden furniture a new lease of life with one of our practical and hard-wearing oil-based paints, which have now been reformulated to give them a greener appeal.

Without compromising on appearance, ease of application or durability, the paints have had their solvent content reduced and replaced with naturally-occurring vegetable oils, which are both environmentally-friendly and truly sustainable.

Our water- and oil-based paints come in a mouth-watering palette of 164 shades – so the hardest thing you’ll have to do is choose the colour!

The aptly-titled Colour Scales® collection is exactly that: the card combines 12 of the best-loved colours from the Little Greene ‘Colours of England’ card with lighter or darker tones of each. The result is a delightfully soft palette that offers subtle variations of shade and an incredibly easy-to-use system for harmonising and combining colours in a room: an essential card for professional designers and home-decorators alike.

Livingroom in French Grey

Hallway in Bone China Blue Paint

David, our Managing Director commented that ‘Our customers repeatedly ask for varied strengths of our colours and this comes as no surprise – the practice of using scales of tone actually has its origins firmly rooted in age-old decorating techniques.’

Contrary to popular assumption there were, historically, no such things as set colour standards, so the designers & craftsmen of yesteryear would create paint shades ‘off the cuff’ by blending raw pigments themselves. Each artisan would subsequently reduce a particular shade with white, in order to produce a personalised collection, using these ‘scaled down’ colours either as individual shades or in harmonious groups to celebrate the architectural integrity of an individual room or entire building.

Little Greene’s Colour Scales® card has been designed to make the colour selection process very straightforward. The layout of overlapping paint chips overcomes the problem of viewing a colour surrounded by bright white (often the reason a shade appears to be lighter or darker on a colour chart than when painted on a larger expanse of wall). The Colour Scales® card enables the client to choose variations in colour strength in the same way the original designers, did but without the associated hassle of ‘mixing your own’.

In keeping with our quality-assurance, all colours are available in the full range of traditional and modern paint finishes, and the chips on the Colour Scales® card are accurate samples of both colour and finish, being made from actual paint direct from a tin of environmentally-friendly Acrylic Matt Emulsion rather than in a factory-matched ink.

From the beginning of April, Colour Scales® will be available nationally and internationally through Little Greene’s network of distributors. It can also be bought via mail & phone order and online.

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Hi, I’m Jane Cumberbatch. Welcome to my new series ‘Make and Do’. In this film, I’m going to show you how to re-vamp a junk table.

Now I’m somebody who’s always on the lookout for old pieces of furniture from skips and in junk shops, and whenever I go looking for a piece, I try and find something that has some interesting depth of detail. Even if it’s in a colour I don’t like, or a wood I don’t like – I’ll still buy it because you can do amazing things with a lick of paint and I’m going to show you how.

Firstly, materials that you need are paint brushes, and I always use a selection, so that you can use the thinner ones for attending to the more intricate bits of the piece, and a wider one for bigger surfaces.

And then you need sandpaper, and then the paint itself.

I’m using white undercoat, and then the top coat is in the colour of my choice, which is a lovely pale bluey green, and I’m using emulsion.

Now, a lot of people say you can’t paint wood with emulsion, but I say no, because if you want a nice matt texture, emulsion is really one of the best textures to use.

Now before you start, the most important thing is to wash and clean the object that you want painted, because if you don’t you’ll find that the paint won’t stick, and you’ll find yourself in a lot of trouble.

I think that the best thing is just to use some detergent and water and a sponge, and to really give everything a good clean, because old pieces of furniture will have years of accumulated grease and cake crumbs perhaps. And it’s really important that you do the cleaning.

After you’ve washed the table or your piece of furniture, the next thing is to sand it down so that it has a good key for the paint, because the paint actually needs to bond to the surface.

You work over the area, up and down, sanding. So you continue until every little bit of the object is finished.

Right, I’ve finished the sanding, and you now have to give this a wash.

Now the first thing is to put on a coat of undercoat, and I’m using waterbased, because it is quick to dry and I like the matt texture, and it’s quite easy to find a universal undercoat at the hardware merchants or your local DIY superstore.

You need to keep a good gentle backwards and forwards motion so that you get a nice smooth effect.

Once you finish with the undercoat, you’ve got to go and wash your brushes. Waterbased paints mean that you can wash them in water, which is a lot better than having to put them in turps or one of the cleaners for oil based paints.

Let the piece of furniture dry for between 1 or 2 hours depending on your local conditions.

Now this is the nice bit, we’re putting on the top coat. This is where you begin to see how paint can transform even the, well I wouldn’t say this table was ugly, but I don’t think it would look very pretty in it’s beaten up state when it was on the skip.

Anyway, you apply the paint in a nice sweeping backwards and forwards motion. Good quality paint doesn’t need so many coats, and you might find that if the piece that you’re painting is very dark, you might need more than one coat, because you need more paint to cover up the dark colour beneath.

What I have learnt by bitter experience, is do not overload the brush. It’s really tempting to slop on the paint to get quick coverage, but you do this at your peril, because it simply means your paint falls off onto the ground or on your shoes or in the place that it shouldn’t be.

You shouldn’t worry about making your piece of painted furniture absolutely perfect. The idea is to actually have a few imperfections, because part of the charm of painting things yourself is that you can make it look more personal by painting it in this way.

Well, here I am, and here’s the finished junk table, and it doesn’t look junky any more. I think it looks really pretty, and it’s the sort of thing that you can use by the sofa or put it by the bath to put soaps on, or even put it by the bed.

I hope that you will have been inspired to do something similar with a junk shop or skip find.

When it comes to deciding on the colour of the door, much of this should be about personal preference but it is worth considering colours that compliment the existing exterior house colours and brickwork.

Painting your front door allows for a certain amount of creativity so whether you opt for a bold, solid colour, a subtle shade or an original design, the final effect should be something you are happy to be met with everyday.  For front doors our Oil Based Gloss Paint is ideal, it is formulated to be weather resistant and hard-wearing for up to 5 years before re-painting.

To begin, remove all fittings from the door such as door knobs and locks.  Sand down the door to remove any sheen or loose paint and use a soft cloth to remove any remaining dust.  Apply a suitable oil-based primer to the door, as recommended by our guide, and allow to dry.

Having a good quality paint brush is extremely important to ensure a professional and high quality finish.  Apply the desired paint colour in the direction of the grain to avoid streaking and, if painting a panelled door, begin with the panel mouldings followed by the inner panels.  Next, paint the centre stile and then the horizontal panels (or cross rails). Finish by painting the outer panels and lastly, the edges of the door.

If you are painting a flush door, it is advisable to paint in sections in order to maintain an even look.  When each section is complete, use horizontal strokes to blend the painted sections together.

If the area is allowed to dry before blending the sections together, the job will look uneven and messy so keep the edges wet.  Working with small sectioned off areas will ensure the best finish.

Images taken from a selection from Flickr under Creative Commons Licence.
Photographers include:

• Klearchos Kapoutsis
• Athena’s Pix
• Hortulus
• Visualpanic
• Jesibo0

The best place to start when ordering your colours is to select a colour in the Oil Based Gloss Paint finish. You can then order your corresponding primer if you need to.