We couldn’t live without grey. It’s one of our staple ingredients because of the way it offers a canvas on which to let other pieces either blend together or stand out and sing. Maybe it’s because of my Swedish background, or perhaps because of the amount of time I’ve spent in the UK, but grey to me seems to provide the right kind of visual comfort as a setting.  We do sometimes decorate with a white backdrop, but these are generally gallery spaces where we want pieces to be read on their own. Grey has a binding quality that we find very helpful in creating comforting and restorative spaces.

For our project on Fano, an island in the Danish archipelago, we chose neutral greys that brought the outside in. We started with the largest ingredient: the stone-like floor that ran through all the rooms and up the walls of the bathrooms. The important thing to get right here was the texture.  Nature doesn’t have many flat, matte greys.  She excels at camouflage, mixing hues and shades, of changing texture to provide visual richness and interest. We then layered on top of this background with woven rugs and sofas in a rough linen mix. We chose shades of colours with some darkness in them rather than springtime pops of colour to create a more grown palette.  For the wooden furniture, we deliberately went for more natural, warmer shades, so that these pieces stood out against the grey background. The fact that the underside of the swooping ceiling was picked out in this natural oak informed this decision. 

Nature is the ultimate teacher. A grey season is so often followed by bursts of colour and the invigorating zing of new life. We mimic this with accent colours, with flowers, vases and plants in our schemes in order to bring some vibrance and energy to the subtle richness that grey can bring. Because we can’t live without grey.  But we’re pretty sure we couldn’t live with just grey, either.

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