Your neighbour in Fulham has seen the colour of the year splashed across every magazine and wants the living room done in it by Christmas. Dulux announced Soulful Sage as its Colour of the Year 2027 in September, a soft, greyed green, and Johnstone’s Trade has gone a different way with Country Soil, PPG15-30, a warm earthy brown. Painting and Decorating News is running both.
Here’s the thing about sage. It looks different in every room. In a north-facing Putney bay it can turn cold and a bit dull, and in a south-facing Chiswick kitchen it can go almost yellow by four o’clock. So we always brush out a sample board, or a one-metre patch, and look at it morning and evening before anyone orders five litres.
Prep is where the money is. Old Victorian walls in Hammersmith and Kensington have been painted a dozen times. Sand back to a key with 180 grit, rake out and fill cracks, caulk the gaps along skirtings and architraves, and spot-prime the filler. New plaster gets a mist coat of watered-down matt emulsion, roughly 70/30 paint to water. Skip that and the plaster sucks the paint dry and you’ll see patchy flashing in a raking light.
Then it’s two coats, with the first laid off properly and left to dry for the time on the tin. As a rough guide, a trade vinyl matt covers about 13 square metres a litre, so a 5 litre tin does around 65 square metres of wall. Woodwork usually wants an eggshell or satin over a primer undercoat. Cutting in is the bit people notice, so it’s worth taking your time with a good 2 inch cutting-in brush.
Trends come and go but a well-prepped wall holds its colour for years. If you’re thinking about sage, or any other shade, for a room in your home, Rennie Decorating Services are painters and decorators covering West London, and you can find them at renniedecoratingservices.co.uk.