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

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

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.

One of the chief concerns is to reduce the amount of CO2 gas that is released into the atmosphere as well as the amount of  solvents, aerosols and toxic gases that are used in products and in manufacturing processes.  As these gases build up in the atmosphere they trap heat.  The greater the human activity, therefore, the greater the concentration of gases and the only way to combat the increase in temperature is to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we emit.

Everyone should take responsibility for climate change, and that includes businesses.  By leading the way with eco-friendly products, services and manufacturing processes, companies can set a great example for individuals and set the standard for conscientious business practice.

We at the Little Greene Paint Co. take our environmental responsibility seriously.  In 2004, we were one of the first UK paint manufacturers to achieve the European environmental standard BS EN ISO 14001. We believe that acting with environmental responsibility need not compromise the high quality standard of our products.

All our water-based paints carry the industry’s lowest eco-rating, with VOC content  now virtually zero.  In addition,  our oil based paints have been reformulated with sustainable vegetable oils to dramatically reduce VOC content and odour.  The paper used in our wallpapers comes from FSC or PEFC certificated sustainable forests; so for every tree used another four are planted. The pigments used to print them are completely non-toxic and our excellent wallpaper paste contains no solvent.

So it really is time to take action and make a change, even if it is only something very small in the first instance.  The future is almost certainly in our hands; instead of lamenting about what damage has already occurred, we should now look towards the future with environmental awareness and positivity and create a better world for future generations to come.

For a subtle look, choose a neutral colour scheme and earthy tones, for a simplistic and calming effect.  Try ‘Camellia’ wallpaper in Grise, combined with complementary paints colours such as ‘Stone-Mid Cool‘ and ‘Normandy Grey‘.

Alternatively, for a slightly bolder look, try shades of grey, brown and green with splashes of brighter colour that are reminiscent of Japanese florals such as orchids and peonies.  In this instance, use  ‘Peony’ wallpaper in ‘Boxington’ on selected walls, offset with paint such as ‘Stone Paint Cool‘ and ‘Stone Dark Warm‘.

For a dramatic Oriental inspired room use bright, vibrant colours and bold wallpaper to accentuate the look.  ‘Pink Blossom’ wallpaper really makes a statement and when combined with ‘Baked Cherry‘ and ‘Jet Black‘ paints will really create the wow factor.  Alternatively, for a brighter coloured look try ‘Shojo’ in ‘Sunlight’ and offset this with vibrant paint colours such as ‘Heat‘ and ‘Sunlight‘.

Oriental wallpaper can be used on featured walls, in alcoves or throughout the room.  With 32 colourways in 7 designs, our selection will help you to create your own oriental theme and look, whether you are aiming for big impact or subtle suggestions of east meets west.

For a Moroccan inspired rooms try hot, vibrant oranges and reds combined with shades of blue and aquamarine.  Moroccans take inspiration from the colours their geography provides; the desert’s golden sands, the hot baked mountain rocks and the sparkling colours of the sea.  Shades including ‘Terre di Sienna‘ and ‘Heat‘ are great for creating the essence of Moroccan landscapes and can be accentuated with shades of blue-green such as ‘Canton‘ and ‘Marine Blue‘.  The dark blue shades can be used as a dramatic backdrop for the entire room or used to add depth to specific areas.  Complete the look with brightly coloured fabrics, jewelled accessories and textured rugs and throws.

For a French country style look, the result is rustic and welcoming.  Decorating colours are inspired by sunshine, fertile fields and the countryside.  Try yellows and reds as well as all shades of green including ‘Garden‘, ‘Sage Green‘ and ‘Woodland‘ to recreate the essence of grass and rolling hills.  The finished look should invoke a warm, casual, old-world feel.

If the delights of the French countryside or the colours of the Moroccan bazaars don’t tempt you, why not opt for a Hispanic Hacienda theme.  Spanish decor focuses on earthy tones coupled with rich reds and terracotta hues.  To create the look try ‘Bronze Red‘ and ‘Tuscany‘ on the walls and compliment this with furnishings in warm, earthy tones.  Fabric tapestries and dark wood are an effective way of completing the look.