March 6th, 2013
Yellow sitting room: sunny & vibrant or too much of a good thing?
Continuing the recent theme of “Inspiration”, last month I revisited the Soane museum https://www.soane.org/ in London’s Lincoln’s Inn Fields with a good design friend of mine. It’s well worth a visit, packed full of ideas and also some interesting stories as to how it became a museum. Given the current lack of sunshine, this particular room cheered me up, although possibly too much of a good thing (?). It’s the south drawing room painted in “Turner’s Patent Yellow”, a fashionable pigment of the day! Farrow and Ball http://www.farrow-ball.com/ have several equivalents (try Babouche no 223 or Dayroom Yellow 233). It has to be one of the brightest yellow rooms I have come across in a while.

Yellow drawing room, Soane Museum
Martin Charles, Courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum
If you like it (not too much of a good thing?) here is the modern day version, the lobby of the Haymarket Hotel London http://www.firmdalehotels.com/london/haymarket-hotel. This really works, especially on a grey London day.
If you’re not that brave, but love an accent of yellow and want to ring the changes as Spring approaches, try something like this…