Decorating Arts and Crafts Houses in Hampstead: Colour, Materials, and Original Detail
A decorator's guide to painting Arts and Crafts houses in Hampstead — original joinery, inglenooks, exposed brick interiors, and colour palettes that honour the movement's aesthetic principles.
Hampstead and the Arts and Crafts Movement
No part of London concentrates as many authentic Arts and Crafts houses as Hampstead and the adjacent streets of Hampstead Garden Suburb. Architects including Norman Shaw, M.H. Baillie Scott, Edwin Lutyens, and their contemporaries built extensively in this part of north London from the 1870s through to the early twentieth century, producing houses that remain among the most thoughtfully detailed domestic buildings in the country.
Decorating these properties demands a different approach from working in a Georgian town house or a Victorian terrace. The Arts and Crafts aesthetic was a conscious rejection of industrial mass production in favour of honest materials, handcraft, and the integration of art with everyday life. A decorator who brings the same specification to an Arts and Crafts interior as to a conventional renovation will produce results that are technically competent but aesthetically wrong.
Understanding the Interior Materials
Arts and Crafts interiors in Hampstead typically feature a combination of materials that require different decorating approaches:
Original joinery. The joinery in a Baillie Scott or Norman Shaw house is a central element of the design, not a background feature. Wide plank oak panelling, built-in settles, inglenook seats, and hefty moulded door surrounds were designed to be finished with oil, wax, or a lightly tinted varnish — not painted. Where joinery has been painted over the decades, the question of stripping back to bare wood is always worth considering. Chemical stripping followed by heat is usually the least traumatic approach for detailed profiles; a hot-air gun alone risks scorching.
Where joinery is to be painted — and some was always intended to be — the colour should be sympathetic: deep greens, blue-greys, and warm earthy tones in eggshell rather than high gloss. Papers and Paints in London offers a range of historic earth pigment colours appropriate to the period; their Soft Distemper is worth considering for walls and ceilings where authenticity matters most.
Exposed brick. Internal brickwork in inglenooks, fireplace surrounds, and feature walls is another characteristic Arts and Crafts element. This should generally be left unfinished or treated with a breathable consolidant if the surface is crumbling, rather than painted. Where brick has been painted historically, lime wash (which allows future stripping) is preferable to emulsion.
Plasterwork. Arts and Crafts plaster is usually lime-based and relatively coarse in texture — a deliberate contrast to the smooth polished finishes of Victorian drawing rooms. A flat, chalky emulsion or a traditional distemper is the appropriate finish. Earthborn Claypaint works well on lime plaster surfaces; its chalky, low-sheen finish reads correctly in an Arts and Crafts interior and is compatible with the substrate chemistry.
Inglenooks and Fireplace Surrounds
The inglenook — a semi-enclosed fireplace seating area — is the heart of many Hampstead Arts and Crafts houses. The ceiling of the inglenook is often low and darkened by soot; the walls may be plain plaster, brick, or tiled. Decorating an inglenook requires attention to the soot staining above the firebox opening: a shellac-based primer such as Zinsser BIN will seal soot before topcoating, preventing bleed-through.
Where Delft or De Morgan tiles survive on fireplace surrounds and inglenook jambs, these should be cleaned rather than painted. If they have been obscured by previous paint layers, careful removal using a chemical stripper (tested on an inconspicuous tile first) can often recover original colour and pattern.
The mantelpiece in an Arts and Crafts house is typically of oak or pine, sometimes with built-in tile panels. If it has been painted, a decision must be made: strip and oil, or repaint in a sympathetic colour. Where the timber quality is good and the profile detailed, stripping and waxing or oiling is almost always the better outcome.
Colour Palettes for the Arts and Crafts Interior
William Morris and his contemporaries had clear colour preferences rooted in natural dyes and mineral pigments rather than the synthetic aniline colours that the Victorian chemical industry was producing. The practical equivalents in modern paint ranges are:
Greens: Sage, olive, and blue-grey green were favoured. Little Greene's Sage, Farrow and Ball's Mizzle or Green Smoke, and Papers and Paints' soft earth greens are all appropriate references.
Reds and ochres: Terracotta, brick red, and Indian red — used on feature walls and joinery. Farrow and Ball's Picture Gallery Red or Etruscan Red; Little Greene's Pompeian Ash.
Blues: Indigo-influenced blues rather than bright cobalt — Farrow and Ball's Stiffkey Blue, Little Greene's Pale Lupin or Juniper Ash.
Neutrals: Warm cream, straw, and buff rather than cool white. Farrow and Ball's String or Clunch; Little Greene's Slaked Lime or Aged Paper.
Colour in an Arts and Crafts house should feel related to the natural world. Avoid cold whites, sharp contrasts, and any finish with a high sheen level — they conflict with the handmade, organic quality the architecture is trying to express.
Exterior Considerations
Arts and Crafts exteriors in Hampstead are typically rendered, tile-hung, or hung with plain clay tiles, often with painted barge boards, fascias, and window surrounds in dark green, black, or maroon. The tile hanging should not be painted; the hanging tiles provide the weatherproofing and are not designed to carry a paint coating. Where the timber elements are failing, the approach is to prepare carefully, apply a penetrating microporous primer, and finish with a flexible exterior eggshell rather than a conventional gloss.
Ready to Talk About Your Hampstead House?
If you own an Arts and Crafts house in Hampstead or Hampstead Garden Suburb and are planning decoration or restoration work, we are experienced in working with these buildings sympathetically and with technical accuracy.
Request a free consultation and quote — we will visit the property, discuss the approach with you, and provide a specification that respects the building's character.