Colour of the Year 2025 – Paint & Paper Library Jewels Collection

The ‘Jewels’ colours are as surprising and spectacular as they are beautiful.


Launching in January 2025, the ‘Jewels’ capsule colour collection features eight majestic paint shades that are a testament to nature’s ability to surprise and delight.

Eight dynamic new colours inspired by rare and semi-precious minerals.

Each one is able to completely transform a space as a single, bold colour, or to accent a scheme alongside the ‘Original’ or ‘Architectural’ Paint & Paper Library shades.

Peruvian Yellow 710

The unexpected, almost magical variants of bright yellow Peruvian sulphur crystals are

most commonly found in, or near, volcanic vents and hot springs. This arresting colour is

particularly suited to contemporary spaces and vintage-inspired interiors

Blue Tiger 712

The Indian town of Wagholi – where this colour was found in a tiny, very rare specimen of

electric blue pentagonite – takes its name from the Marathi word for Tiger.

A stunning contemporary blue that works equally well among warmer or cooler

neutral palettes.

Cobalto 714

Calcite is more commonly a colourless mineral, but the presence of cobalt in rare specimens

(cobaltoan calcite) creates beautiful variants of this vibrant magenta shade, with higher

quality stones developing stronger hues in fascinating organic forms.

Atlas 716

This enigmatic, contemporary red takes its name from the Atlas mountain range, one of a

handful of arid places where shimmering vanadinite crystals can be found in shades of

burnt orange, red and brown; popular among collectors for their rich colour and

exquisite, highly reflective composition.

Midelt Sage 711

An elegant mid-green, matched to a selection of alluring ‘forest epidote’ specimens

from Midelt in central Morocco, where elegant pistachio-green crystals have

formed on metamorphic rock. A charming, natural paint colour that retains all

the distinction of its source.

Malachite 713

This sumptuous shade is read directly from an exemplary piece of velvet malachite

(also known as ‘silky malachite’ and even ‘forbidden broccoli’). Formed in caves, in

sculptural and even stalagmitic forms, the stones are heavy and cold to the touch, but are

popular when polished due to their characterful green-copper patination.

Purple Azurite 715

For centuries, azurite has been used to create a blue pigment for paints and dyes.

Found in the same geological environments as its sister mineral malachite, its colour is

attributed to the presence of copper. This luxuriant paint shade is read from the deep

facets of a particularly high-quality specimen, so rich in colour they are in fact purple.

Rose Cluster 717

The origin of this delicate pink is a truly unique, coral like cobaltoan calcite cluster, formed

on a platform of baryte. The solid grey tones of the baryte perfectly contrast the pink’s

delicate floral quality, both in colour and form.

Little Greene – The Storybook Papers

Little Greene introduce ‘Storybook Papers

Their fifth collection of wallpapers created in partnership with the National Trust.


A light-hearted adventure into childhoods past, the eight whimsical designs in this collection have been inspired by a broad range of historic artefacts and original artworks, found in cherished historic houses from Somerset to Cumbria, conserved and cared for by the National Trust.


Charming objects such as tin cars, children’s wooden games and even a mechanical toy, have been painstakingly reinterpreted by the Little Greene Design Studio, transforming physical artefacts into wallpaper designs that capture all the spirit and character of the originals.


The collection also directly references a fabric print and several original artworks, including some by Beatrix Potter, the beloved children’s author who left 4000 acres of land and 15 farms to the National Trust when she died in 1943.


Lovingly researched, designed and elegantly coloured by Little Greene, each paper is presented alongside a selection of suggested paint shades to bring truly harmonious interior design directly to rooms enjoyed by children and grown-ups alike.


The collection includes the quirky surface-printed ‘Animal Kingdom’ featuring colourful elephants, ostriches and penguins; playful illustrations of chicks and ducks in ‘Riverside Capers’ and ‘Rodney Street’, which depicts a vintage, mechanical apple-picker. Joining these pictorial and scenic designs are new colourways of Little Greene’s much-loved, generously proportioned ‘Broad Stripe’
wallpaper which has been recoloured in a range of joyful, coordinating combinations.


Animal Kingdom


This quirky scene is drawn from a printed 1930s fabric found at Tyntesfield, an exquisite country house in North Somerset, which was home to the Gibbs family for more than 150 years.
The pattern was made into slip covers for furniture in the children’s nursery. Featuring a polar bear and penguins alongside an elephant and an ostrich, the playful design is rich in imagination and has translated effortlessly into a surface-printed wallpaper pattern in a range of confident colourways.


Nip & Lassie


The dogs in this design are Beatrix Potter’s doodled portraits of her beloved working collies, Nip and Lassie. The original sketches are tiny but effortlessly translate into a light-hearted wallpaper design, in which the accompanying sheep have been flocked to bring extra surface texture. Beatrix was known for her dedication to farming, and in particular her award-winning stock of Herdwick sheep which also feature in the design. The breed is synonymous with the Lake District and Potter’s beloved rural cottage, Hill Top, where she famously settled and fervently pursued her creative and business endeavours.


Rodney Street


The naïve line quality in this design accurately references the pair of vintage, mechanical apple-picking toys that inspired it. They are small pieces amongst a huge collection of mostly twentieth century artefacts now cared for by the National Trust at The Hardmans’ House in Rodney Street, Liverpool.
An elegant Georgian property, it is authentically preserved in its 1950s state having served as both home and busy photographic studio for the prestigious portrait photographer Edward Chambré Hardman and his wife, business partner and fellow photographer, Margaret.


Balance

Four framed motifs make up this design, each one originally the subject of a small set of wooden balancing games located at Greys Court in Oxfordshire. In the games, a steady hand is required to locate tiny metal ball-bearings in the holes, and although the balls themselves have been omitted from the design, the locations of the holes have been retained in reference to its origin. Another quirk is the rainbow’s inverted colour spectrum – it would correctly show the red on the outside and blue (or violet) on the inside, but is another original detail retained in the wallpaper pattern.


Road Trip

The former servants’ wing at Sudbury Hall in Derbyshire is now home to the National Trust’s ‘Children’s Country House’. Created with, and
for, children of all ages, it is a place where nostalgic childhoods of yesterday are conserved, shared and celebrated.
This jolly pattern comprises sketches of a selection of vintage toy cars and trucks, cared for by the Trust; notably at Sudbury but also Nuffield
Place, Tyntesfield and Wightwick Manor, amongst others. Aficionados will identify a 1951 Morris Minor, a wooden 1960s Mercedes truck
and a glamorous Austin Atlantic from 1956.


Potter’s Woodland

A magical scene which directly references a variety of individual drawings and paintings from the unpublished sketchbooks of Beatrix Potter.
Besides her irrepressible appetite for farming the land, Potter was a prolific and accomplished artist, fascinated and inspired by the nature
that surrounded her rural home, Hill Top in Ambleside, Cumbria.


Riverside Capers

The animals featured in this design were all originally painted by the children’s illustrator Cecil Aldin. A founding member of the London
Sketch Club, Aldin was known for his cartoonish animal depictions, and was published alongside literary works by Charles Dickens and
Rudyard Kipling, amongst others.
A children’s bedroom at Wightwick Manor in the West Midlands features a frieze which includes several of Aldin’s farm animals, including a
mother hen with her chicks and a playful line of running ducks.


Broad Stripe

Striped fabrics and wallpapers have long been used to bring simple, refined pattern and elegant, effortless colour combinations to grand
and humble interiors alike.
In Georgian and Regency times, this generously proportioned stripe would have been used more frequently in large rooms and amongst
bold colours and strong patterns.
In contemporary interior design, wide stripes are still used to balance pattern, but have taken on more usability by virtue of the more relaxed,
coordinating colour palette in which they are now available.