Influential Irish interior designer Roisin Lafferty isn’t afraid of colour. She drenches rooms in it and coats bespoke joinery in rich layers. No surface escapes her.
Paint is like make-up, she says.
“Accents in interiors are the lipstick and nail polish of cosmetics. People are braver with their nail choices, especially.”
Indeed, she has worked on several cosmetic salons and clinics, including a nail bar in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia called Base and Boon.
The nail bar is a place where her professional life and a personal pastime intersect, for when she wants to relax, she likes to paint her nails.
It bleeds into her working world, for the use of lacquered furniture is a decorative trope she uses to great effect.
“Paint is utterly transformative,” she says, demonstrating this with a recent penthouse project in London.
A space with glass walls was more of a minor refurbishment, interior décor and rejuvenation.
“Colour was the main thing.”
In the living room, the lead image in this story, the walls are painted in Dahana, inspired by a recent visit to Saudi Arabia’s Dahana desert, an endless sea of golden dunes, framed in russet and ochre.
A sun-kissed hue it beams warmth to interiors and complements earthy palettes and organic textures beautifully, she explains.
She likens the pigment in a good lipstick to that in a good range of paint.
Thickness – it’s almost like velvet. It has such solidity, especially if using niche colours. It's the depth to the pigment, how it catches light, how it looks in shadow, she explains.
"All the painters I’ve worked with say how lovely it is to work with. It’s the feeling of it, the depth of it."
She’s appearing at the upcoming ptsb Ideal Homes Show at 10,40 am on Saturday, April 25th, to show how she uses paint, in particular her new collaboration with Fleetwood Prestige.
“Now that the collection is being used, it’s a good time to showcase ways it can work.”
It’s the technicality of the paint that impresses her.
Its multi-surface matt is, she says, “quite literally a game changer”.
A self-proclaimed perfectionist, she wants everything to be the same colour. Which doesn’t, on the face of things, seem like a difficult ask.
”However, paint behaves differently on different surfaces, and when different versions of the same colour are used, from eggshell to gloss to matt, different paints are used for windows - there has always naturally been a differentiation.
"You can now paint everything with this one finish. It’s very clever.”
For the London penthouse, all that happened was paint, she explains.
The London project is harmonious, she says.
“I used putty pink and sand tones as the property is mainly glazed and could be a little sterile.. I wanted to create warmth and consistency.”
Homeowners and renovators have responded really well to the range.
“We’ve had lots of new kinds of people very open to bringing in colour," she says, delighted with the response.
“They love Moves Like Jagger and Malin. So many people love Zallal. I thought it would be quite strong.”
It also features in the London penthouse and is a colour she has used in her own joint office at her gallery space on Fitzwilliam Square, where many shades of the paint coat the walls.
“We’ve had a few dinners here for other creatives. It’s such a nice colour in the evening.”
She mines many sources for ideas. Business leads come mainly from Instagram and the press. A more casual way of communicating, Instagram is where she gets most enquiries and has gotten some large projects directly.
“It’s easier to meet people. I’ve found so many artists and suppliers from the platform.”
Business is good. The team has grown, and she currently has ten projects on the go, which is a big investment of time and money.
Many of her projects feature bespoke joinery picked out in punchy colour.
She likes colours to clash.
Lovers Walk and Cobalt are two of Lafferty’s signature tones. And she uses them together at 2: 1 residence, one of the many private homes she’s been commissioned to do.
The shelving and desk are painted in Lovers Walk. She feels it is something anyone can do.
Elsewhere, a wall of built-in shelving and storage wears Cobalt, a notice-me colour that helps delineate that space.
Painting wardrobes is also 100 per cent doable, she concludes.
“I recently did a three-bedroom house where I’ve blended the wardrobe to match the walls.”
The talks will, of course, feature visuals.
She doesn’t work any other way.
“Colour has to be seen. Sometimes you’re drawn to a colour. Sometimes it’s a feeling you can’t quite describe, sometimes you're drawn to go lighter, but you get a diluted result.”
You will hear more if you attend Roisin’s talk on Saturday, April 25th 10.40 am at the ptsb Ideal Homes Show. You can see the full Fleetwood Prestige collection here.
