Jade Seas, Dhows and a New Wallpaper Story

A new collection begins

I’m two weeks into working on my new wallpaper and fabric collection. For those of you who don’t know yet, it’s inspired by the Kenyan Coast, a place that has completely captured my imagination.

Every collection starts with a feeling, and this one begins with the warmth, colour, and quiet magic of the Indian Ocean.

Why the Kenyan Coast

Kenya has been part of my life for many years. I lived there twice,  first as a newly married couple, and later as a family with our daughters. During those years we spent many happy holidays along the Kenyan coast, returning again and again to its warmth, colour, and sense of freedom.

We even spent our honeymoon there, at a place called Delta Dunes, north of Malindi on the Tana River delta. It’s a wild, unspoiled stretch of coastline, with around 50 kilometres of completely deserted beach. No crowds, no rows of sun loungers — just endless sand, wild water, and the feeling that you’d stumbled upon a place the world had almost forgotten.

That sense of quiet magic has stayed with me ever since, and it’s what sparked the idea for this collection.

The magic of the Kenyan Coast

There is something so beautiful, raw, and slightly untamed about the Kenyan Coast. It’s a place of contrasts: developed yet untouched, modern and full of tourists, yet real life still quietly unfolds beside the polished hotels and beach clubs.

The colours are what stay with you. The sand is so fine it’s almost white, and the sea isn’t the predictable Mediterranean blue. Instead, it shifts between jade greens and soft teals, changing with the light and the tide.

Miles of wide sandy beaches stretch in both directions, with rugged vegetation pushing its way right to the shoreline — it’s hard to tell whether the land is claiming the beach or the beach is claiming the land.

Among the palms and frangipani, huge baobab trees rise unexpectedly, like quiet guardians of the landscape. Troops of colobus and vervet monkeys swing through the branches overhead, feasting on fruit, while dhows drift silently along the horizon, carried by warm coastal winds. They feel like echoes of another time.

This is the mood I want the collection to hold: relaxed, sun-bleached, slightly wild, and full of quiet movement.

The unseen first steps

The first week of planning a collection is rarely the glamorous part. It’s the behind-the-scenes work: building production timelines, researching printers, sourcing materials, and mapping out how everything will actually come together.

It’s not the part you imagine when you think about designing, but it’s essential. Without this groundwork, the beautiful ideas never become real products.

The colour palette: the heart of the collection

Ironically, the thing that has taken up most of my time this week has been the colour palette.

I began by going back through my reference photographs from the coast, looking for a thread of colour that ran through them all. From there, I started building out the palette — adding complementary shades, deeper tones for contrast, and of course the colours that instantly say tropical ocean.

A typical collection might have between 12 and 18 colours. As a devoted colour lover, I’ve naturally gone for the full 18.

Once the palette was chosen, I had to mix each one by hand, ready for the painting phase. This is where patience becomes essential.

There’s no strict formula. It’s more like:
a dollop of this, a dab of that, another dollop here, two tiny touches of something else. Stir, paint a test patch, wait for it to dry. Then adjust, test again, and wait again.

And so it goes, eighteen times over.

Every now and then you strike gold — the perfect mix on the first try, or a colour that’s already sitting in the palette exactly as you need it. But mostly, it’s careful tinkering.

In total, I’ve spent two full days perfecting my colour-mixing alchemy. Now, finally, the palette is ready.

What comes next: painting the hero prints

Next comes the most exciting part: paint to paper.

I’ll start with some loose, playful studies to get back into the flow — experimenting with shapes, marks, and colour combinations. It’s a chance to loosen up before the real work begins.

After that, I’ll move on to the hero prints. These are the centrepieces of the collection — large, continuous patterns that use most of the palette and tell the full story of the coast.

They’re the designs where you can’t quite tell where the pattern begins or ends. They just keep flowing, like the shoreline itself.

A note about the original collection

While I’m deep in the process of creating something new, my original wallpaper collection is still available.

However, Kitito is now in very limited stock, so if you’ve been thinking about it, this is the moment to move quickly before it’s gone.

Follow the journey

I’ll be sharing more behind-the-scenes moments as the collection develops — from first sketches to finished prints.

If you’d like early previews, studio updates, and first access to the new collection, you can sign up to my newsletter below.