There are few people who understand how color changes a room quite like Joa Studholme.
After decades spent creating colors for the feted British paint brand Farrow & Ball and helping people transform their homes, her approach is surprisingly simple: trust your instincts, embrace the colors you love, and stop worrying about getting it “right”.
From choosing warmer neutrals to painting ceilings, using unexpected flashes of color, and allowing rooms to become darker and more cocooning as the day goes on, these are the decorating lessons Joa returns to again and again.
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Joa Studholme was one of the speakers at this year’s Livingetc Unlocked. You can now sign up for notifications about future Unlocked events.
(Image credit: Future / Brennan Buccannan)
1. “What Do You Feel Comfortable With?”
(Image credit: Farrow & Ball)
This, for Joa, is where every successful color scheme begins. Not with interior design trends. Not with what your neighbor has done. Not even with the color everybody is suddenly talking about.
“What do you feel comfortable with? Because that’s the most important thing. You live with these colors.”
After decades of visiting people’s houses, she says she can often start to understand someone’s palette before she has even stepped through the door. “From the color of their garden gate or front door, I can pretty much work out what palette somebody is going to like. I also look at what they’re wearing.”
Memories can be equally revealing. A color might remind you of a childhood room, a holiday or a landscape. And if you are struggling to articulate what you love, Joa suggests looking at the images you instinctively save.
“I’m a great believer in Pinterest. Although, funnily enough, most of the time people show me pictures of white rooms, that’s fine because I’m not necessarily looking at the colors. I’m looking at the spirit of the room.”
2. “We’re Going Warmer”
(Image credit: Farrow & Ball)
If there is one clear shift Joa is seeing in interiors now, it is away from cooler neutrals and towards colors with more warmth and complexity.
“Neutrals were my big thing when I first came to Farrow & Ball,” she says. “The last lot that were really popular were the stony ones. A little less grey than previously. But now the really popular neutrals are much warmer, like Stirabout and Jitney.”
Stirabout takes its name from a nourishing Irish porridge, while Jitney was named after the bus that carries New Yorkers out to the Hamptons. “I wanted Jitney to be really uplifting. I might have been watching Gossip Girl at the time,” she laughs.
For Joa, decorating with neutrals works precisely because they do not shout. “Jitney is all about being quite laid back and letting everything else take centre stage,” she says.
Another favorite is Au Lait, originally created through Farrow & Ball’s collaboration with designer Christopher John Rogers. “Warm but not creamy, it is just the easiest color to work with. Keep quiet about it. It’s everybody’s secret.”
3. “I’m a Huge Believer in Going From a Lighter Space During the Day to a Darker Space at Night”
(Image credit: Farrow & Ball)
One of Joa’s most useful principles for decorating with color has nothing to do with coordinating colors and everything to do with how we move through our homes.
“I’m a huge believer in going from a lighter space during the day to a darker space at night,” she says. “I think it’s really good for the soul.”
A light kitchen or hall can feel energizing during the day. Then, as evening comes, she likes moving into a deeper, more enveloping sitting room. “It gives you a great big hug.”
A Joa-approved sequence starts with Scallop in the hall, moves into Dead Salmon in the sitting room, then uses something lighter, such as Au Lait, through the kitchen or on recurring woodwork.
4. “The Thing Most People Are Concerned About Is Flow — It Doesn’t Bother Me in the Slightest”
(Image credit: James Merrell. Design: Farrow & Ball)
Ask Joa what homeowners worry about most, and one word comes up repeatedly: flow.
“It’s the word I hear more often than anything.” Her response is surprisingly liberating. “It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I don’t care if I have a red room, a blue room, and a green room.”
Rather than repeating one palette throughout an entire house, she prefers individual spaces designed around individual needs. There is, however, one trick that can stop a collection of different rooms from feeling chaotic: keep the colors at a similar “weight”.
“If I’m standing in a hallway and seeing into three rooms, they should somehow work together even if they are red, blue and green.”
By weight, Joa means intensity. A deep green and a similarly saturated red can sit comfortably beside each other even though the hues themselves are completely different. “It’s really the intensity of the color,” she says. The result is continuity without sameness.
5. “A Little Shock Is Fun”
(Image credit: Farrow & Ball)
Some of Joa’s favorite uses of color are also the smallest. She loves painting the jamb of a door in an unexpected shade, creating a tiny flash that appears as you pass through a room. “It doesn’t necessarily have to correspond with anything. It’s just about having a kind of shock.” She compares it to a pocket square or a brightly colored sock. “It’s that same feeling. Just a little tiny thing which you see and then it’s gone.”
In one hallway, she ran a checked wallpaper across the ceiling and slightly down the walls, then framed three doorways with bands of the three different colors from the paper. “It sounds ridiculous when you describe it. But nobody notices it. It just feels like it should be there,” she says. This leads to one of her most interesting decorating philosophies. “Good decoration isn’t noticed. It’s when it’s wrong that people notice things.”
6. “Ceilings, Always. Ceilings.”
(Image credit: Henry Woide Photography. Design: @daabdesign)
“I personally hate a big white ceiling because I think they completely ruin any paint scheme,” Joa says. Instead, she treats the ceiling as the fifth wall, either carrying the wall color upwards or using another shade entirely. And when she wants to bring light into a darker room, she goes one step further.
“I’m a huge fan of the gloss ceiling. Gloss creates reflection, allowing light to bounce around the space. If you’ve got a dark room, paint the ceiling in gloss. Pink Ground gloss is one of my particular favorites,” Joa says. Again, the effect of decorating a ceiling in this way does not necessarily announce itself.
“You walk into the room, and you don’t think, ‘Oh God, the ceiling is pink and glossy.’ You just think it feels really nice.”
7. “It’s Fantastic That Colors Change”
(Image credit: Farrow & Ball)
One of the greatest anxieties people have about paint is that the color they chose in the shop suddenly looks completely different at home. Joa thinks that is exactly what makes good color beautiful. “Some people get very freaked out because it looks green in one light and dark brown there and gray somewhere else. But that’s what makes it alive. A shade might feel warmer in south-facing summer light, then greener or greyer in cooler northern or winter light. Embrace it. It’s alive. It’s fantastic.”
Rather than fighting those variations, Joa believes they should become part of the room. Her own favorite Farrow & Ball color, Light Blue, is a perfect example. “It’s a fabulous bedroom color because it’s silvery blue when you wake up and then much more silvery and gray at night.”
8. “You Can Use Finish Almost Like Another Color”
(Image credit: Farrow & Ball)
Joa’s obsession is not only with color, but with what happens when the same color is given two entirely different finishes.
She loves Farrow & Ball’s Dead Flat for its chalky, almost velvety quality. “You feel like you can dive into the walls. Because it can be used across walls, woodwork and ceilings, it also makes color drenching simpler. One pot of paint can do the whole thing.”
But her favorite trick is pairing that softness with gloss. She might paint the bottom metre of a wall in gloss, then use exactly the same shade in Dead Flat above. “The gloss is super durable for dogs, suitcases, prams, whatever. And it creates this sparkle, with the light bouncing off it, while the Dead Flat sits above.”
9. “If You’re Wary of Color, Just Use a Tiny Bit”
Despite her reputation for color, Joa has no interest in forcing anyone into a maximalist home.
“If you’re wary of color, it doesn’t matter. Just use a tiny bit.”
Children’s and teenagers’ rooms are perfect places to experiment. “If you live in a very neutral, contained house, it’s quite fun to let your child put color inside the cupboard or on the back of the bedroom door. “They’re often in there with the door shut, but you’re not, so they get their boost of color, and you get your neutral home.”
She also likes split color in children’s rooms, taking a stronger shade to around hip height and using something lighter above. “This is so great with younger children. When the child is playing on the floor, it feels really cosy down below, but the lighter color above makes the room feel as though it opens out.”
10. “Isn’t It Lucky We All Like Different Colors?”
For all the forecasting, color charts, and decorating advice, Joa ultimately believes taste should remain deeply personal.
She herself struggles with lilac. “I find it a difficult color to decorate with. Even the darker purples. But isn’t it lucky we all like different colors? The world would be really boring if we all liked the same thing.”
Personally, she is currently drawn to colors that feel warmer, richer, and more grounding: Etruscan Red, Duster, Marmelo, Broccoli Brown, Reduced Green, and Dibber. That’s what she is decorating with at home at the moment. In fact, she’s doing a whole project with just two of these colors. ‘These are all colors that feel like they’re keeping you safe, but they’ve got a little bit of excitement as well,” she says.
And perhaps that is the best summary of Joa’s approach to decorating: create a home that gives you security without becoming predictable. One that feels comforting, alive, and unmistakably yours.
Because, as she puts it, the aim is really very simple. “Choose color that makes you smile. Color that makes you feel good about yourself.”
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