11 rooms which demonstrate why blue and brown is the perfect colour scheme
Blue and brown are an alluring duo, like wet sand meeting the sea, or a tree trunk interrupting a span of blue sky. We have seen all manner of blues and browns paired – icy pale blues with equally cool oak shades, rich, jewel-like teals with warm tobaccos, stronger sea blues with dark browns – we could go on. Essentially, like many successful colour combinations, this one is complementary, pairing hues from opposite sides of the colour wheel. Whichever exact shades of each you choose, we suspect it's rather difficult to go wrong – scroll down for plenty of inspiration from the pages of House & Garden.
Paul Massey1/10In this characterful 18th-century house in Bath, designer Nicola Harding used Farrow & Ball’s ‘Stone Blue’ on the ceiling of this basement room and carried it down to create a false cornice above the ‘Tanner’s Brown’ walls. The same blue was used on the woodwork, providing a contrast with the red ‘Basset Sofa’ from Howe and the green antique Swedish rug.
Christopher Horwood2/10We first fell in love this colour combination in Lucy Williams' London kitchen, where she painted the cabinets in Paper and Paints' ‘Sky Blue’, teaming them with an island painted in Farrow & Ball's ‘Cola’ and brown marble countertops from Lapicida.
Michael Sinclair3/10Designer Pandora Taylor has painted the walls in the kitchen of her London house an icy blue – Farrow & Ball's ‘Parma Gray’, which makes a lovely backdrop for pale, ash-fronted cabinets. The final result has a pleasingly Scandinavian look.
4/10Rivki Rabinowitz's Toronto house, designed by Ashley Montgomery, sports Farrow & Ball's ‘Borrowed Light’ on the hood, walls, trim, and baseboards, while the island is painted in a deep burgundy, Benjamin Moore's ‘Raphael’.
5/10Elsewhere in Rivki Rabinowitz’s house, Ashley Montgomery has balanced ‘Japanese Stencil’ wallpaper from Jasper by Michael S Smith above the dado with the glossy blue Saltillo tiles below. By continuing these tiles up and under the arch and combining them with a distinctive vintage brass chandelier, Ashley has offset the matte paper with colour and reflective texture. The cabinetry in deep burgundy ‘Raphael’ gloss by Benjamin Moore tones with the wooden floorboards, which are softened by a rug in neutral hues.
James McDonald6/10In the bathroom of his north London flat, Brandon Schubert has used tiny square tiles from Winckelmans, bought via Olde English Tiles, on both the walls and floor. The space has a pleasingly 1970s feel along with the teak lined walls of the main space.
Tom Griffiths7/10In the bathroom of Corey Hemingway's modernist house, she has used more or less the same combination as Brandon: in this case sky-blue mosaic tiles from Winckelmans and pine cabinetry.
Boz Gagovski8/10Brandon Schubert has expertly combined teal and tobacco in the sitting room of this Wiltshire cottage, covering a sofa in a tobacco-coloured Rooksmore velvet from Lewis and Wood, against a teal blue painted backdrop – “Tea with Florence” from Little Greene.
Christopher Horwood9/10The pantheon of blue and brown would certainly not be complete without Lucy Williams' brilliant west London house, which launched a thousand copycat colour schemes. Painted in the archive Farrow & Ball shade ‘Yonder’, the walls are marvellously striking, and we adore the use of rich tan shades to warm up the scheme.
Mark Anthony Fox10/10What was once the tiny third bedroom was transformed into an office in Charlotte Boundy's London house. To smarten the room up, she painted the window and woodwork in Farrow & Ball’s ‘Reddish Brown’ in gloss, which picks up the orange-brown tones in the blind is made up from Christopher Moore’s ‘Persian Trail’ hand-printed linen. The walls are in a crisp light blue, which coordinates with the little striped curtain underneath the desk from The Cloth Shop.
