Farrow & Ball Living with Colour [Hardcover]

I was blown away to see other reviewers give this book such low marks. Boring, really? Well it's not over the top modern but a book filled with interiors that have a more relaxed lived in style. I'm a huge fan of Farrow & Ball paints and anticipated the release of this book for months. If you're a fan of English country style and author Ros Byam Shaw you'll love this book. I'm currently renovating an 18th century home in Massachusetts and found myself marking every other page as inspiration for my bathrooms, living room and bedrooms. I buy a lot of interior design books; Living with Colour is one of my favorites of 2010.

If you like Farrow & Ball paint or any quality interior paint, this book should be extremely helpful to you. The top interior designers recommend their paints, and some use Farrow & Ball almost exclusively. This book shows why: room after room of rich, luxurious paint. The issue with paint is that it's difficult to see from a small sample how it will look on the walls of the room as the color tends to intensify once the whole room is painted. Designer Jeffrey Bilhuber recommends buying 4 large poster boards, painting them with your sample and placing them on all four walls of the room to see how a large sample looks in your room.

However, it's also helpful to see a particular paint color you are considering on all the walls of an actual room. That's where this book comes in. It is composed of case studies of 16 homes decorated with Farrow & Ball paint and papers grouped by chapter into colors labeled: "all-white, in neutral, softly,softly, bright and beautiful and dark and handsome." Farrow & Ball offers 132 shades of color for every "stripe in the rainbow", says author Ros Byam Shaw. They tend to be "off-colors, knocked back and subtle", she describes.

The paints are created in Dorset, England where the company was founded in 1946 and often were designed to resemble historical shades from the past. The paints have 30% more pigment than other paints, without filler of microscopic acrylic beads, and they have the "refractory quality" of titanium dioxide, an iron oxide that has been used for paint since prehistoric times. These natural ingredients insure the paints have little odor and zero VOC's (volatile organic compounds) that folks nowadays are concerned about. Their depth makes the walls appear "almost as if you could dip your hand into the wall" as one employee is quoted by author Byam Shaw. It also makes them very difficult to try to replicate with another paint brand. You get what you pay for: inimitable quality and the rooms in this book illustrate it. The colors remind me of those in Vermeer paintings.

In this book, the colors star, the interior decoration recedes or blends. And the colors are gorgeous. If you like cottage, country, modern, eclectic and classic historical styles such as Gustavian, Regency, Victorian, Art Deco, Colonial, English Country, French Provencal, just about any style but "Hollywood Regency"--although you could probably find paints of theirs compatible with that style too!-- you'll love the colors in this book. This book is perfect for any interior designer, or anyone thinking about painting their home with a high quality paint who wants to see what gorgeous, quality paint should look like on a wall. The book helpfully lists the names of the paint colors and wall papers so if you see one you'd like to sample, you can take the name to your paint store. The rooms are fairly simple in decor, so if you love simple, understated style, you'll enjoy seeing these interiors. Again, this book is less about decorating tips and styles, and more about the paint and colors themselves.

I love author Ros Byam Shaw's other books OLD HOUSE, NEW HOME and PERFECT ENGLISH and PERFECT ENGLISH COTTAGE on English country decorating and her same quality text is here, too. She has paint tips sprinkled throughout the book and a helpful glossary, based on typical questions Farrow & Ball gets from customers about paint. Ros Byam Shaw is former Features Editor of The World of Interiors, is a Deputy Editor for W magazine (British edition) and the author of 5 books on decorating. One warning: after looking at this book, I wanted to freshly paint all the walls in my home with Farrow & Ball paint.

I Love F and B paint, but was disappointed in their book. I had hoped that the photography could have more accurately captured a true representation of the paint colors, the photography was a little grainy, and the rooms weren't particularly interesting. That said, I still love their paint!

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