I am very conscious of how much colour affects my mood,” says artist and designer Anna Jacobs, sitting on her pink velvet sofa in a zebra-print T-shirt and shocking pink trousers. “I need it around me, it really improves my wellbeing.” Glancing around her three-bedroom rental flat in Crystal Palace, south London, which she shares with her son Zach, 13, daughter Coco, 10, and Zuchon dog, Duffy, it’s abundantly clear Jacobs is no fan of neutrals, preferring to surround herself with a zinging spectrum of vivacious hues – with an emphasis on aquatic shades for their “healing, calming properties”.
She discovered the flat in autumn 2018 and, meeting the landlord prior to signing the lease, decided to be upfront about her decorating plans. “It turned out he was already a fan of my work and loved all the colour,” says Jacobs. And she knows he approves of the majority of what she subsequently did to the interior, because he revisited last year, during the inaugural Crystal Palace Artists’ Open House, an annual event running over two consecutive weekends, which Jacobs established for the area.
Nevertheless, the green of the kitchen walls – Little Greene’s Sage & Onions – paired with fresh turquoise on the window frame (Dulux Trade’s Marine Splash) looked so outré when he later spotted it on her Instagram feed, that it prompted a visit from the property agent. “It just meant I had to sign an addendum to my contract saying I will return anything to neutral that my landlord doesn’t like when I leave,” she explains. He may want to reconsider this when the time comes. The flat has proved so popular on social media that a queue of wannabe tenants is already forming. “I’ve had people messaging me to ask if they can move in after me because they love it so much!” she says.
Decorating a rental property this thoroughly is rare. Most of us can’t be bothered to invest so much time and effort, preferring instead to inject our own personality by hanging pictures on ubiquitous magnolia walls. Jacobs is not, however, most people. A bit of a creative dynamo, she switched from a career in the city in her 40s and, despite being a single mum with two children, successfully launched her own design business in 2015 specialising in home textiles, lighting, art and wallpaper. Furniture store Heal’s snapped up her colourful cushions and table lamps, featuring bird and leaf motifs, within her first year of business and then gave her a pop-up concession at their Tottenham Court Road store in London, which ran for nine months in 2018.
Not all of Jacobs’s application of colour theory went according to plan. She decided to paint her hallway pink to create a warm and welcoming entrance space, but her son Zach walked in and shouted: “You’re joking! I refuse to live in a house with a pink hall!” then stormed upstairs and slammed his door. She compromised by keeping just the woodwork pink – Floris by Mylands – which bounces off the now white walls.
Zach reaped his revenge by requesting a green and purple palette in his bedroom. “I’m not a big fan of purple, it’s really hard to use,” says Jacobs. She offered him a pre-selected limited choice of 12 shades, from which he could choose three or four. “It turned out beautifully and is now almost my favourite room in the house,” she says.
The rest of the interior was completed very much on a shoestring budget. Most furniture is borrowed, inherited from friends, or from eBay, skips and flea markets and then upcycled with a lick of paint or self-adhesive wallpaper. Even the sofabed in the lounge was discovered, abandoned, by her children, who dragged it up the hill and sat on it outside the front door, pleading to keep it.
“It’s a horrid old 1980s grey chenille sofa, but it was free and huge. So, I bought some pink velvet Ikea curtains and threw them over it. When they get dirty I just shove them in the washing machine.” Pragmatic, resourceful and inspiring, Jacobs has an infectious positivity that is surely proof we all need to bring a bit of colour into our lives.
Crystal Palace Artists’ Open House is 11am-6pm, 29 February – 1 March and 7-8 March (crystalpalaceart.co.uk). Anna Jacobs is at annajacobsart.com.
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