Love Your Little Home: Good old white paint.

Huurraah! After abandoning these series for a few months it is back and boy I am excited to share more home love. If you have no idea what I am talking about with 'being back', Love Your Hittle Home is a series about how to enjoy the space you have and how we best utilise our 3 up, 2 down space. 

This post is mainly about one thing and that is our love for white paint! Before we have written about space saving ideas and styling, but this one is all about the paint. 

There are only two rooms in this house that aren't white; the kids bedroom is light grey and the spare room is a beige colour from when it was the nursery. The rest of our space is white. Pure brilliant, no fancy shine, white, matt paint. We buy it in big tubs from Dulux and we just whack it on. It is great. Basic, what we need for the constant covering of everyday life marks; scuffs from toys to finger marks from sliding hands down the wall, you know, general everyday markings. 

Last week We painted the downstairs living space. It had been 3 years and I had the biggest itch for change, or maybe it was just a refresh, but I had been bugging Rob about painting and I just decided to start last Monday, so we had no excuses for putting it off.

It was actually our pine skirting boards which were what started it. When we first did the extension we really loved the look of fresh pine, it is a lovely pale colour and so woody that we didn't want to cover it and we like that bare wood look. Over time though it has become the orange toned pine colour as all the natural oils develop and to be honest, I didn't like it. It just dated the house and with the other wooden topped tables and sideboards I felt that the bright area was very orange toned. 

After painting on a primer I then covered the skirting in Ronseal Diamond Hard Floor Paint in white. This is also what we have used on our wooden floors upstairs and we really love it. It is cleanable which means with kids I can wipe it rather than having to repaint, making life and house upkeep that little bit easier. 

It also is smooth and has a great sheen to it so it looks incredibly neat.

I also used the paint on our wooden fireplace and large cupboard doors as they get touched a lot and again, I wanted something more protective than matt white paint. 

For me using white is key to fooling you into thinking you have more space. Colour can be cosy but when you struggle for room, making things cosy isn't often the best idea. You need to be able to expand with trickery and white sure does that. We are lucky also that this area in particular has a lot of natural light flowing in so that also helps bounce brightness around the room, and with big mirrors everything is reflected well.

So if you want to best make use of creating taller walls and clean space, go white!

Emily