If you're reading this, chances are you already know that pink is the best colour. In fact, it's scientifically proven to make you feel good. According to the kind of people who use Excel for hard sums rather than shopping lists, looking at pink - a warm, bright colour - releases dopamine, AKA the “feel-good hormone”, which can improve our mood, heighten the attention span (this must be why I can spend hours at a time on Instagram) and even boost our sex drive (disclaimer: this boost is cancelled out by procreation).
And apparently (according to the oracle that is Kendall Jenner) pink even suppresses your appetite - in a recent Instagram post, she posted a pic of her pink living room walls with the comment: “I went to dinner with friends and they had just gone to the ‘Human Condition’ exhibition at a former hospital in LA. They were telling me there’s a pink room at the exhibit that had an explanation of the color choice: Baker-Miller Pink is the only color scientifically proven to calm you AND suppress your appetite. I was like, ‘I NEED this color in my house!’ I then found someone to paint the room and now I’m loving it!”
Kendall Jenner in an appetite-suppressing dressing gown/Photo: Instagram: @kendalljenner
But what you might not know is quite how versatile pink can be, especially in the context of home decor. It's not just for bedrooms. Or bathrooms. And it no way needs to have 'girly' or 'starve yourself' connotations. Unless you want it to (pink is very obliging, unlike the small Pink House Dwellers, who are not).
So yeah, here are 6 rooms that rock pink big time. I hope this post inspires you to add a bit more rose-tintedness to your life, whichever space you're renovating...
1) Jessica's kitchen
Kitchen design: Jessica Buckley Interiors/Photo: Douglas Gibb
Jessica Buckley is my interior designer friend who I worked with on my basement Den renovation (see makeover here). She also has one of the most beautiful apartments I've ever had the good fortune to step inside, and is a TOTAL colour genius. This is her Edinburgh kitchen (above and top), which proves pink is perfect in any room in the house. I can also confirm that Jessica's kitchen has the effect of making me feel MORE - not less - hungry, but that's probably because she bakes excellent cakes. In case you're wondering, Jessica says the pink paint on the walls was mixed up bespoke, but is very close to Farrow & Ball's Middleton Pink (which she has in her bathroom). Oh, and the floral blind is made from Misia fabric by Manuel Canovas, and trimmed with black. As Jessica herself says of the room's design: 'the black and white sharpens it all up – I didn’t want it to be blowsy.' Loving your work, Jess.
2) A country house en suite
Fit for a prince/Photo:Susie Lowe
Fuck me, this is a nice bathroom. When Susie and I photographed this house for our exclusive Ultimate Country House Tour feature, I kept finding reasons why I had to faff around in this master en suite. Since I was tiny, there's always been something about pink and gold that has captivated me like no other colour combo (this pink is Pink Ground by Farrow & Ball). And the marble and mother-of-pearl inlay mirrors give the space an extra-magical quality. I might be tempted to add some dark Aesop handwash or a skull to edge things up a bit. But maybe that would ruin the straight-down-the-line princess-and-prince effect. FYI, the sinks were made bespoke, based on a design the owner had seen in luxury Stockholm hotel Ett Hem.
3) Bianca's living room
Bianca's living room/Photo: French for Pineapple
Bianca's living room/Photo: French for Pineapple
Bianca from the excellent French for Pineapple blog is a fabulous person in many ways. These ways include her eagerness for a Chiltern Firehouse brunch, a love of skulls, and her eye for pink. Her living room is an excellent lesson is combining a more neutral pink (yup; it's F&B's Pink Ground on the walls again - I am officially obsessed) with neon pops of the colour, while giving the whole thing the rock n roll edge that was missing in the previous bathroom. See how she adds some skull art and a disco ball and it just looks so RIGHT. Pink is girly? Not here it isn't.
4) The exterior of this Chelsea house
A pink house in London/Photo: Susie Lowe
R E S P E C T to the owner(s) of this house in London's Chelsea (the outside of a house kind of counts as a room, right?) - this is a colour worthy of the tag #pinkasfuck. My house is also technically painted pink, but mine is Farrow & Ball Cinder Rose, a much subtler, greyer pink which has faded a fair bit since it was slathered on my walls a couple of years ago. But this - THIS - is no-messing pink. It's a pink you can't pass off to your other half as a 'warm white'. And it's very much admired by the colour-lovers of Instagram - I see it pop up on my feed all the time. I'm also proud to say this pic was regrammed from my feed by the one-and-only Design*Sponge (I hashtagged it #dspink), so I have Grace Bonney to thank for sending a few hundred followers my way.
5) In the Ham Yard Hotel restaurant
My obsession with Kit Kemp and the Firmdale hotels she designs is definitely no secret. Kit uses all kinds of unexpected colour combos in her rooms which just WORK, but unsurprisingly it's her designs involving pink that are my favourites. Here's the beautiful Ham Yard Bar & Restaurant, where the pink patterned chairs mingle happily with the multi-coloured rattan lampshades overhead.
6) In Lisa's hallway
Lisa Dawson's hallway
Lisa Dawson's a home stylist who loves a wallpaper as much as I do. Here, she demonstrates why a pink wallpaper called Deco Palm from Cole & Son is ALWAYS a good idea in your hallway. If you have a hallway, and it's not covered in this paper, I ask you: why the hell not?
Taken a pic of a pink-related interior recently? Share it with me on Instagram by using the hashtag #pinkhouseliving. I'm giving away a Caroline Watson London fold-away fuchsia bag to my fave pink pic this Sunday...