10 colours for a home office you can focus in

Named by Beata Heuman after a mathematician uncle: a pale grey with a green undertone, the colour of a wiped school blackboard. The name says everything about its vocation — it is a concentration colour, calm without being sad, that absorbs screen light rather than throwing it back. The most restful study grey in the range.

The first hazel leaf of spring, designed by Jinny Blom: a tender yellow green, more coloured than Glass, that keeps a room alive. It is the colour of a creative study — a workshop, a sewing room, a writing corner — rather than an accountant's. It brightens dark corners like a white, only better.

A mid grey with a blue-green undertone, the colour of wet slate after rain, named after the coachbuilders' street in Covent Garden. Deeper than Mews Blue, it gives a study the gravity of a working room without making it dark. Superb with dark timber and leather.

A deep grey with a blue undertone, the colour of dry slate, named after the Brompton Oratory. It has the depth of a night blue without being one — and it is our most asked-for study colour for a colour-drench: walls, woodwork and ceiling in the same grey, with brass and walnut. The room becomes a cabinet.

Our deepest blue, a slate blue that is almost black with a violet undertone — the blue of architects' blueprints, hence the name. In a study it makes the most focused room in the house: nothing distracts, everything set against it gains importance. For studies with a real window, and to be painted floor to ceiling.