Choosing the perfect paint can be agonising (we all know the torture of staring at coloured squares on the wall). Thank heavens, then, for Paddy O’Donnell, the delightful and debonair colour whizz – and Farrow & Ball’s secret weapon. As its international brand ambassador, he acts as the gracious go-between with interior designers, advising them on how to get the best from the company’s extensive palette. He’s worked with Benedict Foley, Plain English at Museum of the Home, at the Beckford Arms in Wiltshire… When we went to visit Butter Wakefield in December, she told us he’d recently been chatting to her about turning her kitchen pink. Watch this space.
A thoroughly nice chap, it’s no wonder everyone’s beating down his door – which, incidentally, can be found in north Worcestershire, south of Birmingham. It’s here that Paddy lives with his partner, the brilliantly talented needleworker Paul Bailie (aka @thismanswork), mother and two dogs, Hilda and Flo. Oh, “and the voices inside my head,” he adds. (Whatever they’re saying, it’s good.) The house itself is an interwar building “of no architectural merit, which is why it’s such fun decorating”. It’s amazing, he says, how “even with little to work with, you can still have great fun creating comforting and hopefully interesting spaces.” Hear, hear.
