Rachel Chudley has always thought in colour. “I am horrendously dyslexic, and when you struggle at school, your brain naturally lands on things that make more sense,” says the interior designer, who is known for her fearless, theatrical interiors. Her earliest memory of colour is of the brown velvet sofas in her “higgledy-piggledy” childhood home in the Northamptonshire countryside – a shade that unsettled her even as an infant.
Rachel Chudley with some of her new paints © Polly Brown
An art-history degree at London’s Courtauld Institute trained Chudley’s eye for colour, which finds its latest expression in her debut paint collection – an edit of 14 shades developed over 11 years of interiors work. “I’ve been wanting to expand what we do for a wider audience for a long time,” she says. “It’s a gloomy old world right now, so it’s nice to bring some colour and joy into people’s lives.” Ranging from reliable staples such as Warm White to “oddballs” such as Complicated Purple – an earthy blend of pigments that Chudley recently realised is reminiscent of her parents’ sofas – the palette has a softness without tipping into the saccharine. Each colour comes in richly saturated, water-based formulas in a gloss, eggshell or matte finish, the latter made from crushed Carrara marble, noted for its durability.
