The Victorians loved colour, culture, collecting and clutter. The richness of their colour schemes can be seen in textiles, ceramics and paint. Plasterwork, particularly ceilings, were no exception. We are all familiar with the lovely ceiling roses in Victorian homes and how often have you seen them tastefully painted? Often as not they are either overdone with inappropriate colouring or painted in the same colour as the ceiling with no additional definition. Such a waste of a beautiful decorative feature.
A renovation of a Victorian home undertaken by Amanda Richmond Chief Interior Designer at Balance Architecture + Interior Design featured a gorgeous ceiling rose but it had been painted by an amateur and it showed. The colours were segmented and separated. Whilst pink and green may be complementary opposites on the colour wheel, the painter had used pure green colour against pastel pink with a custard yellow in between. The body of the ceiling rose was left unpainted with dobs of gold appearing on featured rosettes. In combination this colour scheme was harsh, clashing and not restful to the eye.
Amanda applied a softer tone on tone colour scheme with a soft cream replacing harsh white. Detailed colours added to the centre of the ceiling rose were copied from colours in the wall paper frieze, which had been repeated in the cornice also. The design idea is that colours must have a reason for being there and should harmonise with other elements in the room.