Design Line: Colours transform our interior

A thank you bouquet from the Floral Art Group to suit my colour style.

A couple of weeks ago, I had call from the Floral Art Group in Wanganui to see if I would like to be the guest speaker at its monthly meeting.

It is always a pleasure to speak to groups about my work, experiences and passions and, over the years, I have spoken to a wide variety of organisations.

The Floral Art Group is a great group of supportive women who meet to share their knowledge of flower arranging. But not only is this group about meeting and arranging flowers, it is also involved in the community, giving its time to do demonstrations at rest homes and retirement villages and decorating halls for gatherings or simply arranging flowers for a funeral. Its members bring pleasure on many levels to our community, so I felt privileged to be invited to join them.

The funny thing is that I work mainly in colour but not always, as the personality and lifestyle of my client or home dictates the outcome. The theme for the evening was achromatic, black, white, grey or silver, so most members were dressed in keeping with that theme -- and I, in keeping with who I am, was very colourfully dressed.

The Floral Art Group has members who are creative and passionate about colour, texture, composition and form. Without that passion or a bit of knowledge, they wouldn't be able to arrange flowers the way they do.

I was asked to choose a floral decoration out of all the members' displays for that night. For those who know me well, you may remember my former life as a cake decorator when, for many years, I entered competitions and decorated celebration cakes for weddings, 21sts, big birthdays, christenings and so on.

So I have had a lot of experience in arranging flowers -- thousands of hand-moulded edible flowers for the hundreds of cakes I have made. That is very different from arranging large stand-alone pieces of art. With the piece chosen -- which, I might add, was a very nerve-racking task, worse than judging a house -- it was time for me to speak.

I initially spoke about why and how I got started, my original training in interior design, then the intensive training in colour and colour psychology.

I love how colour and texture affects people, their moods and emotions and how it changes a surface or room. How we cannot escape it, as colour surrounds us, so really we need to embrace it not run from it.

I spoke about how I had used my son as a test case, threatening to paint his room yellow to change his mood in the morning from a grumpy pre-teenage to a happy kid again. Fortunately, the colour was a positive for him and worked a treat.

I spoke about the Mitre 10 Dream Home experience and my role as the interior designer for the Yellow Team. That all seems such a long time ago now but it was a great experience and a learning curve in working with so many personalities from the team of professionals, the "clients" and the film crew.

My work involves working closely with people on many levels, being in their homes or workplaces and their personal space; finding out what makes them tick and how they like to live their lives as their homes should reflect their lifestyle.

It is an holistic approach to designing interiors but also involves healthy choices in other products that go into the home or workplace -- products that are produced with sustainability in mind, that are designed to last and from renewable resources, and keeping in mind products that are user-friendly for my clients and the environment.

I spoke about clients who I worked with years ago, one of whom had major allergies. I had to be very careful that all the product we used did not react negatively with my client so she could live comfortably within her own home.

It was a challenging and rewarding project, very personal and, even after 10 years or so, they still would not change a single thing within the home. They love it.

As most of the room was in black and white and I was in colour, I touched on how colour can make us feel when we wear it and a little on how the style of clothes we wear reflects who we are -- or, at least, it should do. Each topic generated a lot of discussion which is always positive.

Terry Lobb is an interior/kitchen designer and personal colour and style consultant who takes a holistic approach to living with colour, texture and style - email: terry@terrylobb.com; website: terrylobb.com