Night mauves

From the Resene colour inspiration – latest looks gallery

Thanks to their rich grey-meets-taupe-meets-indigo undertones that shift and change throughout the day and night, these hues are infinitely more interesting than a true neutral.

With heaps more character and complexity than you’ll find in your average flat grey, mauves like Resene Ghost, Resene In The Mauve, Resene Greywacke and Resene Shady Lady are often overlooked wall colour options that have plenty to offer. Thanks to their rich grey-meets-taupe-meets-indigo undertones that shift and change throughout the day and night, these hues are infinitely more interesting than a true neutral. And yet, they’re neutral enough in their own right to be a flexible base for building up a wide range of different colour palettes. Any of the aforementioned hues look spectacular with a range of luxe metallic accents from golden brass like Resene Gold Dust to shimmering silver like Resene Silver Aluminium to warm copper like Resene Bullion. But they also look fabulous with furniture in soft blacks or crisp whites such as Resene Gumboot and Resene Alabaster – making mauve an ideal choice if you’re after a glamourous living or dining room setting.

This space demonstrates how you can successfully build a tonal palette with a blend of warm and cool mauves, as opposed to feeling limited to just one or the other. We started with Resene Ghost, a misty otherworldly mauve, as our base wall colour. Warmer and more deeply saturated variations like Resene Matakana and Resene Zulu pop when layered over softer, cool tones like Resene Ghost and Resene Santas Grey while deeper cool hues like Resene Jimmy Dean and Resene Hammerhead add moodiness, contrast and help to ground the space. For a touch of levity, a few small accessories in off-whites like Resene In The Mauve and Resene Cloud add highlights that draw the eye.

Adding battens to one or more walls is a relatively affordable and surprisingly simple way to create more visual texture in a room in a way that seriously ups the sophistication factor. Installing battens in a grid is a classic and popular format, but there really is no limit to the way you choose to arrange them. Instead of crossing, your battens could just extend in one direction – horizontally, if you want to make the room seem wider, or vertically, if you want to visually add height to the space. Vertical battens need not go all the way from floor to ceiling either, nor do they all need to be the same length or width, nor do they need to span the entire width of the wall. In this space, we prove just that by using just ten battens – six of them with a wider/higher profile and four that were 10cm shorter with a slimmer/lower profile. We alternated them and left a large gap in the centre to create a raised feature that frames the statement artwork.

While many choose to paint their battens in the same colour as their walls, choosing a colour that contrasts with your walls to make them stand out more – even if the colour is just one step lighter or darker than your main wall colour – will work wonders for highlighting the effect. In the case of this room, we used darker Resene Santas Grey so the battens would be better defined over the lighter Resene Ghost walls.

The cloud artwork that the battens frame and bring attention to was created using testpots in Resene Gumboot, Resene Matakana, Resene Zulu, Resene Jimmy Dean, Resene Santas Grey, Resene Ghost, Resene In The Mauve and Resene Sea Fog and is framed in Resene Sea Fog. It’s the perfect finishing touch for the space, as it not only acts as a focal point, but it also cleverly ties together all of the tonal accent colours used in accessories throughout the space to make the room feel complete and cohesive.

Accessories: Langham Dining Table and Chairs, Imagen Rug and smoked glass carafe and glass from Freedom. Modena Sofa Bed (Chaise) and Chime Table (side table) from Nood. Lilac throw, cutlery, plates, bowls, napkins and salad servers from H&M Home. Black linen slippers from Muji.

Project by Laura Lynn Johnston. Photography by Melanie Jenkins. 2022