Colour Me Cosy: 5 Shades To Warm Up Your Home This Autumn

We have spent a very long, very hot summer cleaving closely to the lightest, airiest end of the colour chart. As the sun blazed, it felt imperative that everything should be cool whites, sea blues and, essentially, anything that mentally whisked us away to a Greek island idyll. Now though, while we may not yet be deep into the cold, the atmosphere is changing, as is our preferred palette. As the nights draw inexorably in, our need to hunker down and cosset ourselves is almost immediate. In short, colour is returning to our lives – albeit in a more sophisticated guise than the brights of old. Greens are getting muddier, browns richer and reds deeper; even our neutrals are becoming altogether more colourful.



‘Autumn has always offered a natural reset,’ says Frenchic colour expert Jen Devaney, aka @the_house_alchemist. ‘After the high energy of summer, the heat and long days, we begin to turn inwards again. The softer greens we've lived with are deepening into moss, olive and forest. Beige is becoming caramel, tobacco and chocolate. Reds are moving through wine and burgundy into plum and aubergine, while ochres and earthy terracottas bring warmth without shouting for attention.’

Perhaps most interestingly, though, this new appetite for warmth doesn't mean playing it safe. ‘We’re also craving the unexpected,’ says Jen, pointing to powder blue against chocolate, cool aqua amongst rust and olive, or plum sitting alongside red. ‘Our eyes seem to want more to look at.’ With that in mind, we’ve taken five of the season’s most enticing shades as our starting point – and found the furniture, textiles and accessories to bring each one home.

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