Paint Colours of the Past

The current interest in “historical paint” colours stems from a range that Papers and Paints produced over twenty years ago.

Our Historical Colours - the first range with this theme - was taken from colours used in the applied arts (for example porcelain and tapestry). When these first came out many people got in touch with us thinking that they were colours that had been used in buildings of the past. Fortunately, during my academic research I had come across a collection of hand-painted colour cards that had been prepared by a house painter for a client in 1807. Crudely put, it was like finding a Dulux paint chart in two hundred years time.






This unique set of colour cards (of which some can be seen above) was found in the archive of a Scottish house that had been destroyed by fire in the 1940s.



I was loaned the cards for a year, during which time I matched each of the seventy colours in conventional, modern, paints. From these we produced our Traditional Colours the first fully-researched collection of such colours to be put onto the market.



We had clearly started something, for before long a number of much larger companies had jumped onto the bandwagon and other ranges began to appear in the shops. It’s amazing what a lot of PR and a gullible public can do, for colours that had no connection with the past were being touted as “historic” and spurious stories woven about their origins. Pigments derived from vegetal sources were described as having been dug out of the ground and other fugitive ones that may have appeared on the watercolourist’s palette were transformed into house-painting colours.

English Heritage, concerned at the way things were going, employed me on two occasions during the last 15 years to produce ranges of paint colours that reflected those in general use between ca.1700-1950. These ranges were manufactured by big paint companies and put on to the general market. They can still be found, but sadly, both ranges have been diluted for commercial reasons and colours with no precedent have been inserted, so one has to pick with care to find the genuine ones. As a result our Traditional Colours is the only range of fully-researched “historical” colours that are readily available.

If in doubt, when looking at a range of "historical" paint colours, ask what they are based on.

Patrick Baty

Tel. +44 (0)20-7352-8626

Click for more information on what I do.