Fiona de Lys
  • About
  • Courses & retreats
    • The Colour Retreat
    • Aesthetic Narrative
    • Colour Perspective
    • Aesthetic Narrative + Colour Perspective course (bundle)
    • Aesthetic Narrative + Colour Perspective course (full-day)
  • Colour consultations
  • Delysian Colour System
  • Press
  • Contact
Select Page
Three Italian Color Palettes That’ll Make Your Home Feel Like Summer on the Amalfi Coast

Three Italian Color Palettes That’ll Make Your Home Feel Like Summer on the Amalfi Coast

by Steve Gibson

Three Italian Color Palettes That’ll Make Your Home Feel Like Summer on the Amalfi Coast

It’s not as simple as putting a plant in the corner — a biophilic designer shares how the philosophy actually centres around people

by Steve Gibson

Colourful evolution

Colourful evolution

by Steve Gibson

A few of my favourite things: getting to know colour consultant Fiona de Lys

A few of my favourite things: getting to know colour consultant Fiona de Lys

by Steve Gibson

A few of my favourite things: getting to know colour consultant Fiona de Lys

40 pink paint ideas from the House & Garden archive

by Steve Gibson

Maximalist ceilings are having a moment

Maximalist ceilings are having a moment

by Steve Gibson

« Older Entries

Recent Posts

  • Three Italian Color Palettes That’ll Make Your Home Feel Like Summer on the Amalfi Coast
  • It’s not as simple as putting a plant in the corner — a biophilic designer shares how the philosophy actually centres around people
  • Aesthetic Narrative + Colour Perspective course (full-day)
  • The Colour Retreat
  • Aesthetic Narrative + Colour Perspective course (bundle)

Recent Comments

No comments to show.

fionadelys_colourconsultant

Founder: Delysian Colour System
Human-centred approach
Narrative + Home
1:1 + Workshops + Consultancy
@englishhomemag @houseandgardenuk
BIID partner
Last week, my client sent me a fantastic array of Last week, my client sent me a fantastic array of images illustrating her and her partner’s taste for colour with their house renovation. The palette was earthy and sun-drenched, featuring ochres and rusts dappled with fresh aquas and deep moody blues. However, today, the living room was a sticking point – something kept surfacing and then disappearing. The light leaned towards oranges and ochre-pinks but my client wanted a Desert Room with rich ochre yellow. It sort of worked but the idea seemed lost in the room. This downstairs d family space felt more grounded in warmer, richer ‘terre’ colours, and with an adjoining room in minty-aquas. The vision was clear but I couldn’t quite understand why the yellow of the Desert kept surfacing. So I asked, “Why the Desert?” She replied, “I spent my childhood travelling across deserts, collecting and observing rocks and fossils with my father.” That’s special. That’s raw emotion. That’s colour association with a personal purpose. 💛 No Pinterest image can capture that feeling. Sometimes you have to read the room for answers and dig beyond the visuals to find the narrative. Upstairs, there’s a smaller, intimate room flooded with light. I suggested the idea of placing an interpretation of the Desert Room there – a space for my client to retreat to - while downstairs focuses on the colours of geology, rocks and a terracotta floor that will eventually be fitted and tie everything together beautifully. I can’t wait to see how this house evolves into a colourful home, of past and future stories. #homeswithcharacter #homestory #colourfulhome #aestheticnarrative #colourconsultant
If you wanted a lesson from nature about chroma, y If you wanted a lesson from nature about chroma, you just had it. Taking the yellow of the sunshine and diffusing it with the greyness of the moon transformed the outside light to a shade that I can only describe as translucent cardboard! I had my swatches and glass sheets and we assembled as a road of residents making our various recordings. The vibrant yellow turned to washed out dull colour and the white houses became colours I haven’t seen since I first moved here. What a brilliant exercise and what a spectacular performance from nature herself. #colournature #eclispe #chroma #colourtheory #colourgoals
For a few minutes this early evening, as the moon For a few minutes this early evening, as the moon covers most of the sun, the light will become darker, greyer and strange. Colour temperature will drop and the tones we think we know — skin, stone, foliage — shift into a register we don’t usually see. It will feel other worldly for a while. This is the best free lesson in colour theory you’ll get all year: colour isn’t fixed. It’s not a property that lives permanently in an object. It’s a negotiation with light, moment to moment. If you can, step outside today and watch what happens to the colour around you. How does it make you feel? Drop a comment below…I’d love to know. #colourandlight #colourtheory #SolarEclipse2026 #undertones #shadowandlight
Lunch @brightsideroadside with @rachaelsmithphotog Lunch @brightsideroadside with @rachaelsmithphotographyltd - we visited just to look at the ceiling! Who else relates to these colours? #ceilingdecor #retrovintage #colourfulinteriors #interiorismo #colourscheme
Nearly twenty years ago, before I worked with colo Nearly twenty years ago, before I worked with colour, I became a teacher of English language for foreign students when I considered a life-move to the Italian Riviera. Now, as a teacher for my workshops in the UK, I have come to think that colour and language are a very similar craft. Colour communicates before a single word is spoken. A room can say welcome or keep out, rest or hurry, this is for you or this was never meant for you, and it can say it instantly, to the body as much as the mind. The intention of the space matters at most to the occupier, of course, but it can be felt by visitors too. That is where spoken language crosses over - where intention and words clearly communicate an idea or feeling, or sometimes get muddled and confused and the meaning gets lost in translation. Learning to work with colour is really learning to speak this quieter language more fluently, so a space says what you actually mean. A narrative, A curiosity that is so specific. A unique and personal style like no other. Most people are fluent readers of it. Very few have been taught the tools to 'write' it in colour. Join me on my next workshops in October to learn how - link in comments. #colourinspiration #interiordesign #mycolourstory #designdetails #interiors #colourstory
Let’s try again with visible captions! Perception Let’s try again with visible captions! Perception is not passive, it is the first act of authorship. Before a person can name a colour, choose a fabric, or arrange a room, they first see — and seeing is complex. It is filtered through memory, mood, culture, atmosphere, longing, light. This is the quiet premise beneath everything I teach: colour work does not begin with colour. It begins with attention. Most colour education starts with rules around the colour wheel but if a student hasn’t first slowed down enough to notice how they see — what draws their eye, what they reach for without knowing why — then any system I hand them becomes decoration rather than understanding. That gap is where real colour literacy begins. This is also where perception becomes personal. A palette chosen from someone’s own noticing — the moss on a wall, the way a blue carries them back to the ocean — is theirs. It carries evidence of a self, shaped by memory, sanctuary, and aspiration. That’s what the Aesthetic Narrative teaches about Perception. Yes colour is one of its principal languages, but it can only speak autobiographically if the person choosing it has learned to perceive with some clarity and honesty. Otherwise the story gets told in someone else’s words — a trend, a Pinterest board, a copy. This is where Tanizaki’s shadow enters my thinking. ‘In Praise of Shadows’ argues that beauty is often found not in what is fully illuminated but in what is partially withheld — colour read through the same lens is felt more than seen. A person developing their individual colour vocabulary has to sit with the not-yet- named, the almost-right, before clarity arrives. Teaching someone to perceive more precisely is, in practice, teaching them to know themselves more precisely; to build a coherent aesthetic language rather than importing one. In the Delysian Colour System, this is the foundation everything else stands on. Method without perception produces competence. Perception without method produces intuiton that can’t be shared or taught. Together, they produce something closer to fluency and autonomy. #homestory #storyofmyhome #colourstory #aestheticnarrative #interiors

Quick links

About me
Colour consultations
In the press
Vessels for sale
Terms & conditions

Contact me

+44 (0)7443 429 614
By booking form
On Instagram
On LinkedIn

Courses & The Colour Retreat

The Colour Retreat, Liguria 2027

Aesthetic Narrative course
Colour Perspective course

Aesthetic Narrative + Colour Perspective course (bundle)
Aesthetic Narrative + Colour Perspective course (full-day)

©2026 Fiona de Lys Ltd. ‘Aesthetic Narratives’ and ‘Delysian Colour System’ are registered trade marks.
Designed by Gibson. Photographic & prop credits.