"My Choices Are Rarely Born From a Paint Chart" — Designer Róisín Lafferty on the Color Rules She Lives By

Color has always been completely instinctive for me. I think we feel color before we consciously register it. It can energize you, ground you, envelop you, or completely change your perception of a space, which is why I have never thought of it as something decorative that comes at the end of a project. I use color almost architecturally. It can alter proportion, emphasize or dissolve boundaries, draw your eye through a space, and completely change the relationship between one room and the next.

When decorating with color, I am interested in what happens when color leaves the wall and continues across a ceiling, door, skirting, or piece of joinery, because suddenly you are not looking at color; you are inside it. I love it when color completely envelops you and almost creates its own atmosphere around you. And my palettes are also rarely born from a paint chart. They might begin with the veining in a piece of stone, a landscape, an artwork, something I have seen while traveling, or even a memory. From there, it becomes about relationships between color, material, light, and texture.

So, I don't really believe in color rules about which colors should or shouldn't sit together. Instead, my rule is that there needs to be a reason for every choice. If the intention is clear, you can be incredibly bold and still create a space that feels balanced and completely resolved.

1. Decide How You Want to Feel, Before You Decide What You Want to See

Color is emotional for me before it is visual. Before I think about a particular palette, I think about how I want someone to feel when they enter the room. Do I want it to energize them, envelop them, make them feel cocooned, or create a sense of drama and anticipation?

That emotional response should be different from room to room, and therefore affects how you might use color in the space. A bedroom might call for something soft and restorative, whereas a dining room can hold something much richer and more theatrical. Transitional spaces such as hallways are particularly interesting because you experience them in movement, so they can often take a stronger or more unexpected treatment.

The most important thing to remember is that color can come from anywhere. Deeply veined stone, a colored glass light, lacquered joinery, a rug, or an artwork can establish the emotional register of a room just as powerfully as the walls. Start with the atmosphere you want to create and build the entire palette around that feeling.

Róisín Lafferty

Róisín Lafferty is an internationally renowned, award-winning Irish design studio, known for creating captivating, detail-driven environments worldwide. From Europe to the Americas, the Middle East, and beyond, the studio transforms spaces into immersive, unforgettable experiences. Led by Founder & Creative Director Róisín Lafferty, the practice blends interior architecture, art, and innovation into interiors that are both highly functional and visually extraordinary. Each project reflects uncompromising attention to detail, resulting in bold, enduring designs.

2. If You Believe in a Color, Commit to It

No matter what, color is most powerful when you really commit to it. That doesn't necessarily mean making every surface exactly the same shade, but allowing a color to become part of the whole environment rather than introducing it as a small accent.

Of course, color can be very scary when you are looking at it on a paint chart or color wheel — particularly when you are considering rich colors or something deep or intense. However, the more you commit to it — the more you wrap it around you and fully embrace the richness of the tone — the calmer it can actually feel.

In practice, we mostly wrap walls, ceilings, doors, and joinery in color so that it becomes completely immersive. We have wrapped full hallways in my deep, warm burgundy paint color, Moves Like Jagger, and full staircases in cobalt blue. Both sound crazy, both sound extreme, but the finished spaces felt captivating and strangely refined. The more you wrap a space in color with that color-drenching effect, the less loud it becomes.

In our own studio, for example, Zallal on the walls continues into Dahana across the ceiling. They are different tones, but they sit together in a way that makes the whole room feel enveloping.

The same principle can begin with a material. A richly colored stone might establish the palette, with variations of that color then appearing through upholstery, lacquer, glass, artwork, or lighting. I much prefer that kind of tonal layering or high-contrast to trying to match everything precisely.

If the color is right for the space, give it enough presence to really shape how the room feels.

3. Use Color to Manipulate the Space

Color can also be an architectural tool. It can completely change how you perceive the proportions of a room, where your eye travels, and how you experience the transition from one space to another.

For instance, a darker ceiling can visually bring down the height of a very tall room and make it feel more intimate, while carrying a single tone across the walls and ceiling can soften the boundaries of a smaller space and make it feel more enveloping. But it goes far beyond painted surfaces. A strongly colored stone floor can lead your eye through a room, a contrasting material can frame an opening, and a colored glass can filter light and cast entirely new tones into a space.

In our London Penthouse, we wanted to create the feeling of looking through rose-tinted glasses. Rather than using one dominant color, we layered a palette of related tones across different materials and finishes to create that effect. I also love creating portals and using color to frame the journey from one space into another. It doesn't always need to be about contrasting colors. Layers and variations of the same tones can be just as powerful in defining spaces and changing how you experience them.

And finish is just as important. High-gloss, lacquer finishes reflect their surroundings and give color incredible depth and movement, whereas a matt or heavily textured surface absorbs light and changes how that color is experienced.

Rather than asking what color a room should be, I ask what I want the color to do. That shift in thinking opens up so many more possibilities.

4. Build a Palette From Materials, Not a Color Chart

Some of my favorite color palettes begin with materials. Natural stone is particularly extraordinary because it is essentially nature's artwork. A single slab can contain an incredible spectrum of color, often bringing together unusual combinations that you might never instinctively have chosen yourself.

Nature is probably our greatest inspiration for color more broadly. When people ask me whether green dates or is overdone in interiors, I always laugh and tell them to look out their window. You can't even count how many tones of green are surrounding you at any one time, and yet they all coexist naturally. There is so much depth within those variations. It is really about finding the tones that feel right for your own home.

This thinking was central to developing my collections with Aria Stone Gallery. I wanted the collection to celebrate just how diverse and colorful natural stone can be, from softer flesh tones through to rich greens and reds, balanced by stronger black and white stones. What I find so inspiring is that you can take one stone and almost build an entire interior palette from within it.

I always look beyond the dominant color. A small vein of burgundy, rust, green, or blush might become the starting point for upholstery, lacquer, textiles, or artwork elsewhere in the room. Timber and metal can then introduce warmth and contrast, while paint becomes another layer within that wider composition.

Often the most interesting palette is already there within the material. It is about looking closely enough to find it.

5. Use Color to Frame the Journey

I think about color in relation to how you move through an interior. With interior architecture, you are constantly considering what someone sees from one space into the next, what is revealed, what is concealed, and how each transition changes the experience.

Color is incredibly powerful in shaping those moments. A strongly colored room framed through a doorway can draw you towards it before you have even entered. A darker transitional space can create a sense of compression before opening into something brighter and more expansive. Sometimes we will deliberately contrast the color or materiality of adjoining spaces simply to heighten that transition.

But color doesn't always need to be bold. Sometimes you want a calm neutral, almost a 'non-color', and that can be just as powerful because a non-color is really about creating a feeling. In our project The Estate, and in parts of Roisin Lafferty Gallery, I wanted to harness the feeling of natural putty and raw plaster. It is warm, soft, and almost unfinished, carrying across walls and ceilings so that the boundaries begin to dissolve. There might be the slightest green or pink tint within it, but it still reads almost like a raw natural material.

I am always looking at those longer views through a project and considering how colors sit beside, behind, and beyond one another. You are effectively composing a series of frames as someone moves through the interior.

For me, that is where color becomes part of the interior architecture. It helps guide movement, frame views, and create a journey that gradually unfolds rather than revealing the entire space at once. And when you think about color as atmosphere and emotion rather than strictly visual, then incorporating your favorite color trends becomes even more rewarding.

For more inspiration like this, be sure to subscribe to the Livingetc newsletter.