From habitat magazine - issue 24, editorial
Colour is part of our lives in so many ways, and one of the easiest ways to celebrate colour is to paint our walls.
It’s always interesting doing a retrospective feature, like we have this issue to celebrate Resene’s 70th birthday (see "history lesson"). Our memories are so individual. For me, the 1980s was all about pink and grey interiors whereas others remember cobalt blue and jade green kitchens. The 1990s to me was about architectural minimalism; to others it was about Mediterranean-inspired houses. It depends, of course, on your age, where you were living, your parents’ style inclinations, and many other factors.
The added challenge for our stylists was to take the paint colours that were popular in recent decades but to give them a look that would happily sit in our homes today. You’d think it was easy given that the retro look is currently popular but that normally only refers to the 1950s to 1970s. The stylist who was briefed to do a room for the 2000s in Resene Tea reinvented for today looked horrified, and slightly scared. But check out the result on page 12 – it’s stunning!
Thinking outside the square leads to some spectacular results. Like the extremely architectural house on "it takes two". It’s streamlined and beautiful, and in many other ownerships would have a very restrained colour scheme of white, and more white. Not so here. There is white, but there are also about 12 other colours ranging from red and orange to soft greens and blues.
Whatever your reaction to certain colours, there’s one thing we all have in common. Colour is part of our lives in so many ways, and one of the easiest ways to celebrate colour is to paint our walls.
Sharon Newey editor
Sometimes we rush from one thing to another, never quite finishing what we started. Yet we all know deep down that good things take time. One small step repeated many times lets you make a lot of progress without even realising. This is also a great way to make a large decorating project seem more manageable. Painting a whole house is daunting for most so consider breaking up the project into smaller projects doing one room or one area at a time. That way, you can start and finish one piece before moving to the next and your home will still be lovely to live in as you transform it into your dream home.
When you’re decorating, it also helps to have a little imagination and a touch of bravery to step outside your comfort zone and embrace a new colour, a new wallpaper, or a new accessory. It also helps to have these same things when you start a paint company. Seventy years ago, all Ted Nightingale had was a paint problem, a garage, a good dose of perseverance and his imagination. With patience and a lot of trial and error, Resene was born. Now 70 years on and many small and concerted steps later, Resene’s colour range has grown from a choice of one to anything you want. That one original product has now become a wide range of products ideal for a huge array of painting projects, and the sales from that one garage are now international. We couldn’t have done any of this without people like you, putting their trust in Resene.
Thank you for supporting us over these years – you have fuelled our passion for all things paint and colour. Without you there would be no Resene. We look forward to sharing many more colourful projects, products and years with you.
the Resene team
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Printed copies of habitat highlights are available from late March 2024 at Resene ColorShops and resellers, while stocks last. You can view back issues of habitat magazine online.
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If you have an idea, project or story that you think would suit habitat, we’d love to hear from you. Please drop us an email with your details and include photos if submitting a project.
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