Brand collaborations are always fun, and surely few appeal more to an energetic and creative interior designer than those with paint brands, which (generally) allow them to get stuck in up the elbows in pigments and colourful mixes. Over the last few years, a handful of designers have gifted us with exciting collections, ranging from capsule-style paint ranges with colour options in the low double figures to fully-fledged tonal bonanzas available in various different finishes, too.
What’s exciting about these collaborations is that they tend to reflect these designers’ personalities, meaning Beata Heuman’s paints might end up being visual reflections of her Swedish heritage, while Rose Uniacke’s embody her own subtle taste in design, in variegated but neutral shades and tones. In other words, there’s something to suit every taste, and although some of these collabs are a few years old now, most of them can be found on the secondary market if they’re not still being sold by their original purveyors.
Beata Heuman and Mylands
Colour of choice: “Damp Leaf”
Beata Heuman has always been something of a multihyphenate, conjuring fabric and wallpaper designs for Scandi brand Mille Notti, and a range of lights with Original BTC. Now she has added a collection of paints for Mylands, 24 “considered, vivid and reliable” colours called The Dependables. As you might expect, there’s something happily unpretentious about them, not least in the names: Swedish Beata, who works in London, has combined the two countries in the collection, meaning would-be home decorators can choose from shades including “Crayfish Party”, “Stockholm”, “London Brick” and (perhaps our favourite name) the simple “Pub”. Obviously, they’re gorgeous colours, too.
Kelly Wearstler and Farrow & Ball
Colour of choice: “Citrona”
It’s a few years old now, but Kelly Wearstler’s collab with Farrow & Ball is still among the best known in the brand’s arsenal, not least because it was the first time in the brand’s 75-year history that it embarked on such a partnership with a designer. The American Kelly took as her inspiration the landscape and open spaces of California, her home state; when the collection launched back in 2021, House & Garden editor Hatta Byng observed that “cues range from the gritty patina of the Pacific Coast highway to hazy mornings in Malibu. Kelly talks of California as a happy place, where you can get plenty of sunshine and vitamin D; she describes the salty air that comes in from the ocean, the citrus and palm trees, even the particular green of the inside of a wave, all of which provided inspiration.”
Rose Uniacke and Graphenstone
Colour of choice: “Winter Mint”
The less savvy might have expected a self-contained, semi-minimalist designer like Rose Uniacke to be averse to colour, but they would be wrong – partially, at least. Her collaboration with Graphenstone certainly runs the gamut of subtle tones with names like “Apple Mint” and “Sea Mist” and “Dew”, but it also includes strong clay reds, pine greens and even an aubergine and a flower-pot orange. That said, lovers of neutral colours will be best catered for here, with more than 60 different options in different finishes available. They’re all non-toxic and mineral-based, too, meaning they’ll leave you feeling even calmer when sitting among them than you otherwise already would.
Christopher John Rogers and Farrow & Ball
Colour of choice: “Hog Plum”
Christopher John Rogers’ collaboration with Farrow & Ball was concise and measured: just 12 colours and three wallpapers in a collection christened “Carte Blanche”. The colours were inspired by Rogers’ childhood in Louisiana, including the food he ate growing up with his family, and so when the designer describes each colour as “telling a story” – something that you hear a lot when encountering paint collections – he’s only speaking very slightly metaphorically. So, “Hog Plum” is “a muddy yellow reminiscent of the sweet and sour fruit found across Central America and the Southern States”, while “Raw Tomatillo” is “a joyful and verdant green” which represents “the fried green tomatoes made by a beloved grandmother.” Incidentally, this makes it worth checking out each colour without making assumptions based on the name – “Lobster”, for example, far from an orange-red, is a beautiful shade of the blue of pre-boiled shellfish.
Rachel Chudley and Donald Kaufman
Last year, interior designer Rachel Chudley announced her own proprietorial line of paints, available for the first time for non-clients. It’s an unusual set, in that it’s not really a collaboration with another brand, so much as a partnership informed by Rachel’s father-in-law, the master colourist Donald Kaufman. Kaufman has been a major name in the world of colour and paints since as early as 1976, when he and his partner Taffy Dahl founded Donald Kaufman Colour; his paints were used in Studio 54 and the Obama-era Oval Office, among other famed spaces (Kaufman is also a painter in his own right, whose work is among the Whitney and MoMA collections). It was a natural progression, then, that Rachel’s bespoke paints, which she had been developing for clients for years, should be released into the wild (i.e. available by request through Rachel Chudley’s website).
