Merage House

A house at this scale asks a decorative painter to be invisible three or four times over. Panelling has to look like it was always that colour. Plaster has to look like stone. Gilding has to look like it was applied when the room was built and has simply been well kept.

The dining room is built up in glazes. A tinted ground is laid first, then successive thin, translucent layers are brushed and softened over it, each one adjusting the temperature slightly. The result is a pale blue that changes as the light moves across the day — something a single opaque coat of the same colour cannot do at any price.

The mouldings, the ceiling enrichment and the ironwork of the rotunda balustrade are picked out in leaf, then knocked back with a toning glaze. Untoned gilding in a domestic room is relentless; it takes over. Glazed down into a warmer, duller register, it does what it is supposed to do — catch a candle or a chandelier and otherwise stay quiet.

In the entry and rotunda the walls are polished plaster, burnished to a low sheen that reads as a solid material rather than a coating. Under a skylit dome that finish does real work: it takes daylight and diffuses it around the space instead of returning a flat highlight.