Benjamin Moore - Fiona de Lys

PROJECT

As a colour consultant with a broad brush approach, I have the pleasure of working with many different paint brands, each with their unique, special offering. American brand Benjamin Moore has a reputation for exceptional quality and variety provided through a network of expert, independent retailers in the UK.

In 2023, a Benjamin Moore social media campaign was created to promote their premium, interior paint ‘Aura’, in collaboration with interiors magazine Homes & Gardens, on the theme of colour psychology and emotions — how colour in spaces changes the way you feel. As a part of the campaign, I was asked to be filmed for a one-minute video — as an independent colour consultant. The subject matter couldn’t have been a more perfect match for my ethos.

Brand history

Benjamin Moore & Co, founded in 1883, is one of North America’s leading manufacturers of premium quality paint for residential, commercial and industrial coatings. The company maintains a relentless commitment to sustainable manufacturing practices and declares that it continues to develop the most eco-responsible formulations possible.

The Benjamin Moore portfolio spans the brand’s flagship paint lines that include Aura and Regal Select, as well as the most environmentally-friendly premium paint in the US marketplace, Natura. Benjamin Moore is renowned for its expansive colour portfolio, offering consumers and designers more than 3,500 colours across more than 72 countries and 700 outlets globally. In 2015, Benjamin Moore entered the UK market and by 2021 had established relationships with independent outlets throughout; in 2024, they released their social media campaign to further promote the Aura range — which I featured in.

Palette observations

The brief was to choose a selection of five colours that I really liked from the 3500 across the three colours charts — Classic, Colour Preview and Collections. I quickly found that I was naturally drawn to those of the Collections chart because of the chromatic values and the slightly ‘aged’ tones. Within the palette, the five colours I selected are below and each one links to the colour on the Moore website. From my personal shortlist, I had to choose the one colour that I felt most represented me, and that I’d like as a backdrop for the video. I chose Italianate.

Mayflower Red

For it’s richness as an earthy red with orange undertones.

Italianate

For it’s mid-tone depth of a traditional, peachy-terracotta coloured façade.

Rattan

For a sense of grounded, sunshine warmth that is smudgy rather than luminous.

Bed of Ferns

A brown-green tone that makes me think of woodland walks, chirping birds and mossy bark.

Scenic Drive

A green-blue tone that evokes distant oceans on a cloudy day, neither blue nor green.

Working process

As a stylist, it was important to me to ensure that I provided as many props as possible to create a sense of connectivity to the narrative of the scheme I had selected. With my palette determined, the props I supplied came from home because they were already perfectly colour co-ordinated: everything from antique pots, blankets, a couple of small paintings with my five colours in them, to a collection of textured materials that I had in supply and worked with, such as ceramic tiles, along with photographs of the Italian Riviera on my phone.

Although not scripted, I had prepared to answer particular questions — with the idea being to catch the most natural video sequence that best fitted the concept of emotion and clour. The questions were:

Q. Can colours really influence your mood? What about colour temperature?

Q. How can we use colours (and whites) to influence our emotions around the house? And does this change, let’s say, in the city as opposed to the countryside?

Q. What does your own emotional palette look like?