General Chat

I treated myself to a house and decor style magazine yesterday but other than one brightly decorated house it was a journey into shades of grey and dark dingyness ( IMO) .

Living in dull grey and largely rainy January at the moment, and finding it depressing enough that it is grey outside, I couldn't live with grey walls as well. Does seem to be the trend if house programmes on tv are anything to go by also.

What is your pet hate when it comes to decorating styles?

Contentiously perhaps,my second pet hate is a tv mounted on the wall above a fire place. it may be practical space wise but I don't like it. :-)

We tend to go for bright colours, our house is too small for dark colours. Oddly enough the flat we left is bigger than this house, both council.

My house is mostly grey at the moment due to not being able to decorate until the housing association gets there finger out and do structural repairs. It is 2 years next month we moved here and reported it and after umpteen surveyors etc they still have not given us a date for it to be done :-| :-P :-P. I am now on the warpath and emailing and phoning them every week to try and get a result as it is now really P***ing us off it is so depressing.

Years ago something similar happened to my friend, in the end she left her toddler children on their front desk, not ideal but it worked.

Good luck with that LaGooner, keep battling!

ZZzzz sounds nice.

I think if you have a bit of colour it does cheer you in winter especially. I have mostly blues,and lilac and light sage green in the lounge as it is north facing and that helps reflect the light a bit more.

Grey seemed to take over (from magnolia?) as the go-to colour for walls. I like grey, but not as a 'main' colour, I much prefer softer neutrals. We ended up with a grey/white bathroom in our last house - that seemed to work OK, but I wouldn't choose it for living or bedrooms. Decorating hates - jazzy wallpaper (on all the walls, not just one), huge 'square' sofas!

I'm with you on the sofas Sheila.

I'm currently looking for a higher seat armchair,but not yet found one that I like, at a price I can afford. Keeping an eye on the local auction house, but they don't seem to have as much furniture as they used to.

Well I personally dislike wallpaper. I like painted walls and then you can add a border or hang pictures whatever to add some style. I like pastel colours and as for grey nooooo way. My brother told me last year that for flooring and carpets, grey was the in colour but also for decor too.

I think its a depressing colour!

Bathrooms a wellbeing pale green. My kitchen was always a mixture of navy and light blue with matching tiles and worktops. Children chose their colours, pink/fushia for my daughter and son had navy and light blue alternate walls.

Lounge was mushroom and cappuccino as our suites were dark brown. The fire place was black cast iron with a mantlepiece so it all went together.

In this house it is magnolia all through as its not owned by me but was quite happy as most of my furniture is black as well as the carpets so all blends in. i have several pictures on the wall which brightens them.

Whatever colours you choose, you have to think about the furniture in the room and will it blend together. Small room needs lighter colours. Larger rooms can handle darker shades and don't forget your curtains/blinds.

As for a tv above the fireplace on the wall....I have a huge fear of it falling off!! Mine sits on a black unit which also houses all the photo albums but out of sight.

interesting reading what everyone else's likes/dislikes are.

Florence in the hebrides

My pet hate is most of the traditional red roof tiles being replaced by grey roof tiles.

In our area as soon as a house is sold, it is completely gutted and tiles replaced

together with front doors which are also grey. Smooth rendering then painted

white.Not a glimpse of colour. Drives and gardens are being layed with grey paving on

which the huge black cars are parked :-( :-(

That said most of my walls in the house are white but we don’t have a lot of natural

light in our lounge. We have plenty of pictures on the wall providing the colour. :-D :-D

If I had a room with high ceilings I would definitely have at least on coloured wall.

My neighbours have such large tvs on their walls that I’m able to watch them ;-) ;-) ;-)

LaGooner - try threatening them with the Housing Ombudsman!
Though I think initially, as you're in a HA house, you're meant to report the HA to your local council.

Mind you, I've been waiting 9 months for the Ombudsman to tell me how it's going,but they have a lot of broken laws (laws broken by Winchester City Council) to investigate, and it appears the Surveyor responsible for the non-removal of broken asbestos tiles, and the threat that, if I couldn't clear my living room of furniture - on my own - to their timescale, they'd only remove the 6 - 8 tiles around the hole in the floor - that no-one noticed! :-S

As for decor. When I moved here, the decor was bad - not only colour-wise, but also in the putting on of the paint/wallpaper etc.
The doors were that cream colour gloss goes after decades.

I painted everything white, apart from the bathroom - or to be precise - wet room - which has a grey fleck foor, two walls have white tiles on - so I painted the other walls........battleship grey! :-D :-D :-D The rest of the bathroom is white.

I also then used this paint in the kitchen, along the wall where the cooker is. However, this wall is mainly covered in white cupboards, and an uncovered (ie not in a cupboard) gas boiler :-|
As the boiler pipes dominate the wall, I thought they may as well look industrial.

Rambling, as a temporary measure (or maybe permanent) try a booster cushion. OH and I both have them. They add an extra 4" to the chair height and cost £20 each and come in various colours. The link is below.

https://www.easylife.co.uk/product/armchair-booster-cushions/34750

Luckily we are the only people to live in this house from new so any colours are down to us.
By the way when local politicians were came round asking for our vote and asked if these houses were new I said yes they were 40 odd years ago. :-(

Thanks Andy's mum. :-)

I've just been standing looking at doors, as you do. They are the originals ( 1980s) white or were at one point, and desperately need replacing, the joinery round them is atrocious. But spending money on that and other things that would improve the look seems a waste unless I want to stay here longer, which I really don't, and there is a definite ceiling price to these houses in this location.

Compromise between the size of the house which is fine really, and the location which is not. :-S

My pet hate is vertical blinds :-P.

The last two houses I have lived in both had very dark separate loos. I can’trember what I painted the last one, but this house had a dark green patterned wallpaper ( made me think of Mary Quant or Habitat). It now has a pretty lighter wall paper with some of the pattern having a bit of a shine. Somehow got a matching colour remnant from John Lewis for a curtain. Don’t mind spending time in there now ;-)

Mine hate is stately homes of England flock wallpaper!

It’s ok in a stately home with historical ancestry but in modern homes is a big no no for me

LaGooner - agree with you about the blinds.

To me they look tatty :-D :-D :-D

A place we moved into it was absolutely disgusting, human escrament up the walls, local kids got in through the open plan attics, we told the council and they gave us a voucher for cleaning and decorating but we advised them that it is their job to clean it and make it habitable. That was in the 1980s.

Bright colours all the way for us. Our kitchen has 4 walls, one yellow, one grey, one orange, one green. Grey is ok as a contrast colour, but couldn't deal with a grey room.

I take the same view with t shirts, hair (not that I've ever coloured mine which is mostly grey) and nail varnish (not that I've ever worn it). What is it with nail varnish now, girls pay £40 to have their nails painted flesh colour, what's that all about? That's how mine look with soap and water! And others have them pink with grey tips, that's how mine used to look when I'd been working on the car! Sorry, I seem to have digressed. What was the question again?

Oh yes. Pet hates - drab, colourless and lifeless. And I agree with you Florence, much prefer painted walls to wallpaper. I'm also not keen on tv's hanging on the wall, very uncomfortable to watch when they're high up.

But it's each to their own - it's your house, pick the style and colours that you like, ignore what everybody else says.