This Simple Painted Accent Just Might Be 2023’s Answer to the Arch

You’re probably familiar with some of the more popular painted accent walls of the past few years. Thanks to TikTok, painted arches, circles, rectangles, and other color-blocked shapes and squiggles have abounded. Instead of opting for an arch or just painting a two-toned, wainscoting-look treatment — again, both ideas again you’ve likely seen before — Sophie Claire put a fresh take on an abstract painted mural with stripes and color blocking in her London flat. Specifically, she splashed cobalt blue and pink across the walls in her bedroom and out into the hallway, some with the bottom third painted cobalt and mauve above, others with a cobalt stripe sandwiched in the middle of the mauve.

Given that the title of her apartment is a self-described “Escape From Daily Work Drudgery,” it’s no surprise that color and whimsical touches abound. Claire is bold in her use of color, splicing the living room walls with navy and mauve, while painting the kitchen a deep black, and stacking framed colorful posters on the walls of her dining area — all just for fun. She wasn’t always so bold, but quickly learned through hurried decorating that in order to feel happy in her space, she needed to work in some pops of color.

“I was so keen to get cracking on decorating that I made loads of decisions that I totally regretted,” she says, including, in her own words, “furniture that I hated and ended up selling at a loss, walls I painted colors that depressed me (dark gray, anyone?!).” Luckily, she’s since curated a wonderland of jewel-toned rooms with bright furnishings and vibrant paint projects big and small.

While the bright, primary blue and mauve color scheme might read juvenile in another space, in the main bedroom of the home, B&Q Colors’ “Muted Rose” and Dulux’s “Oxford Blue” create a playful but still restful oasis. Claire even carried the colors onto various accents in the room, like the front of an upgraded IKEA TARVA unit, wall-mounted milk crates used for displays, and on shelf brackets to blend those crates into the wall behind them. Oh, and of course, the bedding matches the paint colors exactly! Maybe 2023 will be all about stripes and color blocking in this enveloping, asymmetrical but still visually soothing way.