Joa Studholme’s job title at paint company Farrow & Ball is “colour curator”, which makes her sound like a hipster doing something groovy and opaque, or a rare breed of fine art specialist. In practice, she is something altogether more down-to-earth: a paint and colour consultant with a large dollop of Mary Poppins empathy, pragmatism and cheeriness mixed in for good measure.
Over the past 25 years, Studholme has parachuted into upwards of 4,000 homes to advise daunted newbies, or fraught couples, on their colour schemes. “They don’t know where to begin,” she says, as we sit in the bay window of her partially decorated new flat in London’s Notting Hill. The walls and woodwork, including the shutters, are painted in Dead Salmon in a dead flat finish. “Or there’s a marital issue,” she continues, invariably over the choice of palette. One half hankering after something daring and fun, the other wanting safe neutrals frequently results in complete deadlock.
