Interiors: do you speak Down Pipe?

Joa Studholme knows a thing or two about colour. As international colour consultant for Farrow & Ball, she has for the past 20 years been an integral part of the company that made Elephant’s Breath and Mouse’s Back stock phrases among the interiors-obsessed middle classes. The former TV producer also set up a colour consultancy service, visiting people’s homes to advise them on the perfect combination of shades. Her latest project is How to Decorate, a complete manual on colour. “Decorating is like a recipe, and this book is like a cookbook to guide you every step of the way,” she says. “The houses featured aren’t particularly grand. They are actually really accessible. ”

Her own home — the lower two floors of an Edwardian house in north Kensington, west London, which she shares with her husband, Andrew, a commercials producer, her son Cosmo, 22, and daughter Nancy, 17 — is, unsurprisingly, an ever-changing palette of Farrow & Ball shades. The couple bought it 20 years ago as lots of smaller flats and turned it into a single entity. “When we were redesigning the space, we threw things up in the air, so it’s far from a standard layout.” The sitting room is upstairs, and the kids’ bedrooms are downstairs, “so they can come and go without their mother shouting”, she says laughing.

The kitchen is also in the basement, and they sacrificed one room to build a huge, modern staircase and create an extra-wide hallway, very different from the standard narrow corridor.

“I have practised using colour in this house for ever, and it’s nice to be able to put all those thoughts into the book,” she says. “People are fanatical about Farrow & Ball, because colour really does do something extraordinary. I paint the walls one day, then change the woodwork the next. What I’m saying is, just do it. Have a go and see what happens. I honestly do practise what I preach.” l

How to Decorate (Mitchell Beazley £30) by Joa Studholme and Charlotte Cosby, is published on Thursday. To buy it for £25 (inc p&p), call 0845 271 2135 or visit thesundaytimes.co.uk/bookshop

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Joa’s spring colour tips

Yeabridge Green An uncomplicated fresh green that puts everyone in a good mood. Use as an accent.
Pink Ground Fresh and elementary, it has the feeling of a new life.
Peignoir For the less traditional-minded, our new pink with a romantic feel.
Cromarty A soft blue grey, inspired by the swirling mists and seas of northern Scotland; it makes you relax instantly.

Down Pipe: ‘a dark hall creates drama, so when you enter the rooms that lead off it, they automatically feel light,’ Studholme says. White painted floors create a feeling of space. The staircase handrail is a vintage surveyor’s measure from Retrouvius

All White: pale woodwork contrasts with the colour on the walls and floor. The glass-topped desk is by Le Corbusier and the sculpture is by Lucy Glendinning

Dimpse: above the fireplace is a Patrick Caulfield painting called Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

Brassica: her daughter Nancy’s bedroom. ‘We made it a bit funkier by only taking the colour up to picture-rail height,’ Studholme says. ‘It also helps you to concentrate on the art’

Words: Claudia Baillie. Photographs: Mark C O’Flaherty