I love this time of year when all the magical blooms appear, and we get a wave of blue and purple across buildings, gardens and our parks.
I just couldn’t help but be inspired to find some beautiful examples of rooms that these beautiful flowers could have directly inspired with all this blue around. Along with a few paint colours and wallpapers, I think anyone who loves this time of year as much as I do could fall in love with.
Glamping and Bluebells
Parks and in the countryside become flooded with swathes of bluebells popping up between the trees. On a glamping trip, we found a whole field of untouched bluebells that felt like a magical lawn had been laid.
Did you know that it’s actually against the law to intentionally pick, uproot or destroy bluebells? Which is probably why almost half the world’s bluebells are found in the UK, being relatively rare in the rest of the world, so we should be proud of their yearly pop!
So picking up on the blues and slight purple tones I ran across this breakfast nook; I mean, shouldn’t we all have a breakfast nook this glamorous! Be inspired by the large print to add grandeur and the banquet style seating with a round table that makes the most of the space. In city UK homes, you could do something similar and give yourself extra storage under the seating for those large serving dishes we never have enough space for!
Wilful Wisteria
But it’s not just bluebells. I love all the Wisteria that is climbing around the buildings of London. Now Wisteria is not just found in the UK, but around the world, and it can be pretty aggressive, so plant carefully. Its symbolic meaning is to warn us against passionate love and even obsession in relationships that came from its aggressive nature. It can quickly grow and be easily more than 30 feet tall, often taking years to bloom.
Now if you have space, big blue bathrooms with feature tile wall like this one can’t help but make you fall in love with bath time! It feels like a modern take on a bathroom in an old Italian hotel I stayed in when on the Amalfi Coast. You could imagine something like this in a Roman villa.
Farrow & Ball do an amazing wallpaper simply called Wisteria, making it super easy for this exercise, that comes in few colour waves. My favourite is the BP 2223 that uses a Stiffkey Blue background and copper flowers. Can you just imagine using this library as inspiration from a Nashville home and using that wallpaper on the ceiling of your room? Don’t be afraid to wallpaper the ceiling (or get someone to, as it’s not easy) because it can make the best feature wall! This room is actually painted in Hague Blue from Farrow & Ball.
Some California loving
And finally, Ceanothus, also known as California Lilacs, might be why I love it so much! Our neighbours have a beautiful one that flowers each year. Unfortunately, I’ve done an awful job capturing how magnificent it is in lieu of trying to get Angus in the photo, but hopefully, you get a sense of it. Not a surprise that Ceanothus comes from California, but its little known fact is that it’s a preferred forage plant for deer and elk during the winter. The one in the neighbours garden is obviously not under any threat then!
Love this room because I feel like it’s taking direct inspiration from the images above. The green velvet sofa like the green grass, the parquet flooring like the slipper and the blue walls. Now I know that the blue isn’t quite the purple-blue of the Ceanothus but you get the vibe. Angus’s gold and copper highlights are even included as well!
If you are loving the purple-blue vibe I would recommend Farrow & Ball’s paint called Pitch Blue because it does have that purple undertone on the right level that I think could have worked really well in this room combination and actually elevated it a bit into something more unusual and dramatic.
Little Greene has two colours you should also look at 1.) Pale Lupin and 2.) Peep. Remember, whatever you decide, test because your light and room will impact what these look like.
But it raises a good point. You have to be careful with blue and a purple-blue colour can start to look a little funky in a bad way if you don’t get the tone or the vibe quite right. I’m going to end this with an example of when I think a purple-blue has been done perfectly. I love the attention to detail with the little stripe of colour down the skirting board – how simple but how effective is that!
Let me know what you think!
Life in double digits 