Hulver Studio — interior design

A colour is not what is in the tin. It is what covers what was there.

Residential colour and material schemes. First consultation £120, redeemable against a project.

We specify colour the way it behaves on a wall — as a film over what was already there, resolving coat by coat. So does this page.

01

Colour scheme

A full palette for the whole home — dominant, secondary and accent per room, specified to the paint reference and proofed on your walls before a tin is opened.

02

Material scheme

Floors, stone, joinery, metal and textile pulled into one material story, sampled and laid up as a board you keep.

03

Full room design

Layout, lighting, built-in joinery and the schedule to build it — drawings your trades can price and work from.

Recent work — four rooms

Each wall resolves as you read it.

Marlowe Drawing Room — Islington townhouse
01 · 2025

Marlowe Drawing Room

Islington townhouse

A north-lit first-floor drawing room. The client had lived with magnolia for nine years and wanted a colour that held its nerve after dark. Heather 04 reads cool by day and deepens under lamplight — the reason it took three coats over a grey primer to stop the old wall greening through.

on the wall the spec
Coat 3 of 3 Heather 04
Ashcombe Kitchen — Victorian terrace, Walthamstow
02 · 2025

Ashcombe Kitchen

Victorian terrace, Walthamstow

Cabinetry sprayed in Spruce 12 against bone walls and unlacquered brass. A saturated green wants an even ground or it patches, so the doors were primed grey and laid in three thin coats rather than two heavy ones.

on the wall the spec
Coat 3 of 3 Spruce 12
Pell Bedroom — Garden flat, Peckham
03 · 2024

Pell Bedroom

Garden flat, Peckham

A warm clay envelope — walls, ceiling and trim in one colour so the room reads as a single held tone. Clay 07 sits close to the primer in value, which is exactly why the coats matter: under-hidden, it muddies toward grey.

on the wall the spec
Coat 3 of 3 Clay 07
Tarn Cottage — Stone cottage, Hathersage
04 · 2024

Tarn Cottage

Stone cottage, Hathersage

Limewash, not paint. It is a translucent mineral finish — it never fully hides the wall behind it, so the plaster keeps showing through however many coats go on. The colour on this wall is the plaster and the wash together, and it never resolves to the flat chalk on the swatch. That is the point of choosing it.

on the wall the spec
Coat 2 of 2 Chalk limewash

Limewash never fully hides — the wall on the swatch is not the wall in the room, at any coat.

How a scheme is built

Sixty, thirty, ten.

A room holds together when one colour dominates, a second supports it, and a third does the work of an accent — the brass on a tap, the spine of a book. We specify all three to a paint reference and proof them on your walls before anything is bought.

60 · Heather 04
30 · Bone
10 · Brass

From the journal

All notes →

Working notes on colour, coats and how a scheme actually gets specified — written for anyone about to paint a room and unsure how many tins to buy.

Start with your walls, not a mood board.

Book a first consultation — £120, redeemable against a project. We come to the room and read the light in it.