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After the ceiling, the floor: colour comes right down to your feet - solid, checkerboard or a painted zone - and the room changes its footing. Here is the art and the craft of the sixth wall, with six complete palettes to get you started.
Discover the palettesStart here
The sixth wall carries colour onto the floor: a floor painted in one solid plane, a checkerboard of two shades, or a zone of colour that draws a rug under the table, marks out a corridor or announces an entrance. After the ceiling - the fifth wall that drenching rehabilitated - the floor is the last surface no one dared paint, and the largest of all after it.
The gesture is an old one: the painted floorboards of Scandinavian houses and English cottages, the marble checkerboards of Haussmann entrance halls, the stencilled floors of colonial homes. It returns today because it solves what open-plan rooms cannot: zoning without partitioning. It asks for a paint made to be walked on - which is precisely what our Decorative Floor Satin is, available in every one of our colours.
Why it works
The floor carries everything: the eye lands on it as you enter, before the walls. Three mechanisms explain what colour changes there.
01
A plane under the table names the dining area; a pale zone in a dark room names the passage; a checkerboard in the hall says where you are before you have looked up. Without a wall or a piece of furniture, the painted floor organises an open room - and a painted rug never slips, never wears, never needs washing.
02
A deep floor anchors the furniture and the walls, like a base beneath a sculpture: tall rooms gain weight, bright rooms gain gravity. A pale floor does the opposite - it opens, it enlarges, it throws the light back up the walls, precious in a corridor or a north-facing room.
03
Mismatched boards, visible repairs, parquet too yellow or too dark, dated tiles, the concrete of a conservatory: painted, the floor stops being a problem and becomes the decision of the room. It is the cheapest second life a floor can be given - and the most spectacular.
Your turn
Pick a palette, then compare the three floors: the solid plane, the checkerboard, the painted zone on the parquet. Walls, woodwork and ceiling follow the palette - watch what the room becomes each time.
The palette
The floor
In real life a floor is painted in a finish made to be walked on. See the matter of the floor
Our palettes
Each palette starts from a floor colour and gives it its official companions: the checkerboard white, the wall shade, the woodwork, an accent for the one chosen contrast. Every swatch links to its colour, ready to sample.
01 · Entrance halls, corridors & kitchens
A soft black and a porcelain white, in squares: the hall floor of three centuries, on pale grey walls that leave it the floor.
02 · Conservatories, kitchens & dining rooms
A near-black archive green underfoot, beneath lichen-white walls: the floor of an old glasshouse, showing off everything that grows on it.
03 · Kitchens, bedrooms & darker rooms
A wheat gold underfoot, beneath chalk walls: the floor that manufactures sunshine in a north-facing kitchen, and dries the bare feet of a summer bedroom.
04 · Bathrooms, children's rooms & utility rooms
A sea blue underfoot, beneath porcelain-white walls: the floor of bathrooms and children's rooms, where you walk on water.
05 · Kitchens, hallways & workshops
An earth red underfoot, beneath plaster-white walls: the Provençal tomette without the tile, for a kitchen, a hallway, a workshop.
06 · Living rooms, corridors & staircases
A warm stone grey underfoot, beneath sand walls: the most discreet of floors, unifying a run of rooms without ever drawing attention to itself.
Going further
The connoisseur's variation: send the floor colour up the skirting, then up the stairs. Floor and skirting in the same shade, and the room loses its baseline - the floor reads larger, the walls taller. On a staircase, the same colour on treads, risers and string turns the stairwell into one volume flowing from floor to floor.
The golden rule: walls in a white related to the floor. A stark white over a deep floor redraws the baseline you had just erased; the colour's designated white lets it climb. Our official pairings give each shade its whites - that is where the wall that goes with the floor is chosen.
Boathouse · No.33 on the floor, skirting and stairs, Greenwich Time · No.8 on the walls: the sea blue climbs from one floor to the next, and the stairwell becomes a single room.
Amber Grey · No.156 on the floor and skirting, Cadogan Stone · No.59 on the walls: the stone erases the baseline, and the run of rooms reads twice as long.
The matter
The sixth wall is first of all a matter of material: a floor is painted in a finish designed for footfall, chairs pulled out and mops. Our Decorative Floor Satin exists in every one of our colours - the same pigment as the walls, in a paint that stands up to wear. The walls stay matt, the skirting takes a notch of sheen, and the room reads as one piece, floor included.
The secret of a floor that lasts is in the preparation: wood sanded and dusted, tiles degreased and primed, concrete sound and dry. Two thin coats beat one thick one, and the floor is left to harden for a week before the first piece of furniture - two to four for a full cure.
Find your finishThe rules of the art
On floorboards, sand back to bare wood, dust twice, prime; on tiles, degrease, sand to take the shine off, prime with a suitable adhesion primer. A badly prepared floor flakes in six months; a well-prepared one lasts ten years.
Start from the centre of the room, never from a wall - walls are not straight. Squares of 30 to 45 cm for a hall, larger for a living room, laid on the diagonal to widen. The pale colour first, over the whole floor; then the tape, then the dark.
One thick coat marks and dries badly; two thin coats harden right through. Let the floor breathe between the two, then a week before the furniture goes back - with felt pads under every leg. A full cure takes two to four weeks.
Before painting a whole floor, paint a rug: a rectangle under the table, in front of the fireplace, at the end of the corridor. It teaches you what the colour does at your feet and how it ages, and it is often enough on its own. The whole floor will follow - or not.
Yes, provided you prepare and choose the right paint. Parquet is sanded back to bare wood, dusted and primed; tiles are degreased, keyed with abrasive paper and given an adhesion primer. Then two thin coats of Decorative Floor Satin, designed for footfall and washing. Our Decorative Floor Satin exists in every one of our colours.
Well prepared and left to harden, a painted floor lasts for years in a bedroom or a living room, and is refreshed with one coat in a busy hallway. A full cure takes two to four weeks: a week before the furniture goes back, with felt pads, and no wet mopping for the first month.
Deep, it anchors the room and hides dust less well than people think; pale, it enlarges and throws the light back, but shows marks more. The checkerboard holds both at once - which is why it has crossed three centuries. In a dark room a pale floor changes everything; in a tall white room a deep floor finally gives it weight.
Mark the rectangle in pencil with the furniture in place - 20 to 30 cm beyond the table on each side - sand the zone lightly to open the varnish, dust, prime, then lay good-quality masking tape and two thin coats of Decorative Floor Satin. Pull the tape away at 45° while the paint is still fresh. The parquet around it stays as it is.
Order the 100 ml sample pots of the floor colour and its white, and paint them on the floor - directly on the boards, in a corner a piece of furniture will cover, or on a board laid where it will go. Walk on them, look at them at floor level morning and evening: a floor colour is never judged standing in front of a wall. Our online visualiser also lets you try the wall shade on a photograph of your own room.
The family
Six ways to wear colour with conviction, from the total envelope to an afternoon's gesture. Each has its page, its rules of the art and six ready-to-paint Mylands palettes.
Torn between an accent wall, coloured woodwork or a dado? See the ways of decorating
A room has six walls. The last is the one you walk on - and it is time to paint it.
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