Strathfield Victorian House Heritage Colour

Designing the heritage based colour schemes for this 1880s Victorian house in Strathfield (in Sydney’s inner west) was a joy. When we first spoke, the owner wanted to do the interior entirely in heritage colours. We combed through all the heritage palettes from various paint suppliers (Resene and Haymes have great heritage colour collections). As heritage colours tend to be very strong, combining multiple heritage colours in one room would have been too much.

We realised we had to be more creative and give the traditional heritage colour scheme a modern makeover. We started with one heritage colour for each room, and then found more muted tones of traditional colours. Each room ended up with a scheme using four or five colours; one heritage colour, a white, gold in the ceiling rose, then one or two muted versions of heritage colours.

The original Victorian ceiling roses in each room need to be a focal point. Rather than painting them all white we used a palette of five colours in each of them, creating a masterpiece in each room thanks to the skill of the painter. The cornice in each room contains that room’s chosen heritage colour, combined with a white to create a high contrast feature. We decided to use colour for the ceilings in the lounge room and master bedroom. The master bedroom ceiling is a soft pale green while the blush wall colour from the hallway has been repeated on the lounge room ceiling.

We made a brave decision to paint the hallway ceiling a bold red. The inspiration came from the long red hall runner carpet and a bit of research that showed some examples of heritage colour schemes and we found a few examples of red being used in a Victorian house. The combination of blush and red separated by the plain white cornices is just magic.

It took more than a year to get through all the rooms, but the end result is a work of art!