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.

A socially-minded focus on the environment and sustainability will see the use of natural materials, such as woods and metals, become a popular choice for furniture. Alongside this try using an earthy colour palette mixing greens, browns and beiges to create a calming atmosphere.

In 2010 Grey will emerge as a staple colour to compliment any room of your house. When teamed with vibrant colours such as purple or yellow it creates an unexpected and stylish effect. Identified by colour forecasting specialists Pantone as a must have colour for this year, Turquoise can be used in many different ways. Try it as an accent colour to brighten up a room filled with muted beiges and natural tones, or use it alongside other shades of blue to achieve a cool and tranquil space.

Texture will be a trend that affects all aspects of interior decor.  Look out for furniture items such as rugs, carpets and cushions that have interesting textures or have been developed from unusual materials. This trend can be extended to your choice of paints and wallpaper as well. Try combining matte and gloss paint colours to achieve a textured effect, or use a textured wallpaper to create a cosy atmosphere.

Whether it’s a unique piece of furniture or just a souvenir from your last holiday, inject a bit of personality into your home this year. Items that display evidence of craftsmanship or individuality can make your home feel more personal and welcoming. Look out for sustainable ethical items that will last you a lifetime.

Finally, 2010 will see the wallpapered ceiling emerge as a forward-thinking take on the wallpapered accent wall.  A wallpaper that compliments the colour scheme of your room can create even more of a design statement when applied to the ceiling. It can work to draw attention to architectural features and unusually shaped rooms. It can work equally as well to add a touch of eccentricity to a more conventional four-walled room.

If using wallpaper throughout the room, try to choose different patterns for the walls and ceiling and make sure they are broken up by other elements such as wooden panelling. This will avoid making the room feel boxed in, and will make sure your home is on trend for 2010.

The following questions answer some of the basic issues that crop up during wallpapering and painting. Feel free to add your questions or thoughts in the comments.

Q) What is the best method to remove wallpaper?
A) There are a lot of different ways to successfully remove wallpaper from a wall, but some of them can be very tedious. Heat can often be the best free solution to remove wallpaper. Covering an area of the wallpaper with very hot water and leaving it to soak in for couples of minutes, then scraping it off becomes much easier. For quicker results, you may find that a wallpaper steamer helps dampen the wallpaper a lot easier, but this obviously comes at an extra cost.

Q) Can you paint directly over wallpaper?
A) In a word, yes. It is generally best to strip the wall if you are planning on painting it, but you are able to paint directly onto it with most wallpaper. You need to make sure you have an even surface, so this means pasting down any loose bits of wallpaper, and filling any holes that may be in the wall. If the wallpaper is shiny you may want to test a small area first to see how the paint reacts to the surface and use a primer if necessary.

Q) How do you prepare a wall for wallpapering?
A) This answer is best broken down into the following steps:

1. Make it smooth – Fill any holes or bumps in the wall to ensure you have a smooth wallpapering surface. If your wall is in really bad shape, you may need to have it plastered before applying any wallpaper.
2. Lining paper – Although not a necessity, lining paper will help cover a multitude of imperfections in a wall – a common issue in older properties. Lining paper should be cross-hung (applied horizontally) if you’re going to hang a wallpaper on it (this will prevent the glue from the top wallpaper lifting the joints of the lining paper), or hung vertically (with completely flush joints) if you’re going to paint it.
3. Apply the wallpaper!

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.

We are delighted to welcome Jane Cumberbatch to the Little Greene blog.

An interior designer with a number of best-selling books to her name, including Pure Style and Decorating Easy, Jane is an authority on simple, accessible, natural styling and what she calls “A blueprint for 21st century living”.

Jane’s website – Pure Style Online – is a must for inspiring ideas and budding stylists, with a wealth of knowledge, tips and over two decades worth of first-hand design experience.

Jane will be passing on a few trade secrets along with some advice on how to use colours in your home – look out for more posts in the coming weeks and months…

One famous fan of Little Greene was eager to cast his eyes over an exclusive preview of our next wallpaper collection, officially being launched in January. We are, of course, assuming it’s our charming paints and wallpapers rather than one of Terry’s legendary pinstripe suits that prompted this textbook enquiry pose from the renowned impersonator.

Terry tries to make an equally good impression by kneeling down in front of Rory Bremner