A new leaf

From the Resene/Your Home and Garden Colour Home Awards Competition - Sep 2006 finalist

Children’s author Sue Welford wins with resene ‘schist’ in her hall

Warm hallway colour.

If a house was a book, Sue Welford’s would be a bestseller. Every page would be full of warmth and colour, and memories of her former home in Britain.

The author’s choice of Resene ‘Schist’ for her hall has won her the first Your Home & Garden Resene Colour Home Award.

Sue, author of the Charlie Scroggins and Just George kids’ series, had never heard of the rock schist until she began telling admirers the name of her hallway paint.

“I’ve been educated as well!” she laughs. Sue, the author of more than 40 kids’ books, and her husband Mick moved to Waipu from Britain almost six years ago and, although they loved their 10-year-old rural property, they were unsettled by the off-white décor.

“I need colour – and I found it really cold and quite depressing,” says Sue. “There’s no question about our decision to move here from the UK, but it was the lack of colour that was depressing. I didn’t feel at home.”

She’s more settled now she’s surrounded by the colours she loves – doors in Resene ‘Red Berry’ and the lounge off the hallway in Resene ‘Drover’. Sisal fl ooring has added texture underfoot to a hallway bathed in the warmth of the sun through a pitched glass roof extending to the front porch.

Her previous home could not have been more different.The couple used to live in a 500-year-old Elizabethan oak cottage.

But now Sue and Mick are writing their own history together in New Zealand.