Paint designer Joa Studholme, the inspiration behind many of Farrow & Ball's distinctive colours, will be talking about her book, Recipes for Decorating, at Dorchester Literary Festival next month. She tells Jess Thompson more about her passion for colour.

“Because the world’s in a bit of a pickle, we quite want to have some nostalgia at home – colours that make you feel like your house is giving you a great big hug.”

I’M not sure how one does the calculations, but I’m pretty certain that Joa Studholme - who’s in charge of choosing the paint colours for Farrow & Ball - has one of the best jobs in the world. Why? Well, just imagine that a key part of your job involves sitting with ramekins, a couple of teaspoons and a dash of pigment, mixing colours together to find those that give you the sense of a hug, and you’ll have a pretty good idea.

After a successful career as a producer in advertising, near the end of the 1980s Joa left the industry to have her first child. She was soon wanting to do something new, so it seemed like an interesting proposal when friends asked if she might like to get involved in opening the London showroom for a small Dorset paint company they’d acquired. Joining a staff of 31 - most working in the Wimborne factory - she thought she might do it part-time, for a while. “Little did I know,” she says, with a mixture of pride and amazement.

Little did she know indeed, because it’s surely no coincidence that in the 23 years she’s been with the company it’s grown to the international success it is today, employing thousands of people across the world.

She’s certain that having no formal training has been hugely beneficial. “One hundred per cent,” she says. “I think I’d always had the creativity; it had just lain dormant. Everything we do in Farrow & Ball is born from passion, and personally I’m immersed in a world of colour and I just love the product. As well as designing the new paints I do between 10 to 15 consultancies a week, both here and abroad, so I’m looking at colour all the time; and that’s my training.”

“Also, I think I came at it from a slightly different point of view. For me it was all about the normal home. Originally our colours had developed in conjunction with the National Trust, and people were slightly scared of them; thinking they couldn’t use them unless they lived somewhere stately. I’ve tried to develop colours which work for everyone – whether your home is contemporary or traditional; in a basement or a manor.”

The company’s paints are as well-known for their names as they are their density of colour and velvet consistency. And although the names are undeniably quirky, choosing them is never something Joa takes lightly. “Some of them come from nature, things like Mizzel, Dimpse and Cromarty. I’m a dreadful insomniac and always listening to the shipping forecast. I used to think about the swirling mists on Cromarty Firth - I see colour immediately if somebody says something like that - so I wanted to make a colour that looked like sea and mist together.

“Stiffkey Blue came from the colour of the mud on a beach in North Norfolk, where I used to take the kids. I always used to say I wanted to make it, so, there, the name was obvious.” Others, however, took more research. “We have a new colour called De Nimes – inspired by the workwear my hipster son always wears and which I often watch swirling around the washing machine. When I was developing it I called it Workwear, but we then decided that wasn’t quite right. So we looked into the history of denim, which derives from serge de Nîmes – serge from Nîmes. This was bastardised to denim – so we’ve called the paint De Nimes.”

When I ask if hers is a recognised job that career advisers should be telling students about, she laughs. “Perhaps not. It’s a role that’s just evolved as I kind of knew where I wanted to go with it. For instance, for the last eight to ten years there’s been this mania for grey, but I think everyone’s gone off that because those were the boom times, when we didn’t need to be nourished in our homes. Right now we really need that, so lots of our new colours are pretty strong: nostalgic and traditional; restorative and comforting.”

I ask what dress code the world’s best job requires. “I used to do the black-all-the time thing, then decided it was all a bit pretentious.” Her laughter deepens. “What somebody recently pointed out is that I dress like I decorate. Often I’ll wear something quite plain - like my walls - but I’ll always incorporate a hidden piece of colour: a head-dress, or scarf beneath my coat. And shoes, very often I’ll wear stupid shoes – I love that thing of looking quite normal, but having a twist.”

And her favourite part of her job, I wonder? “I love all the bits, in different ways. On the consultancy side of things, I never know where I might be going. I’ll just be given an address, and in London it could be a mansion or a basement flat and I love that aspect as both are equally rewarding. It’s always quite fun when a celeb comes to the door – one has to compose one’s face… Also I love that I travel a lot and am constantly meeting really interesting people.”

So, I ask, is it one of the best jobs in the world? She considers the possibility, but refuses to answer. Although, quietly, I suspect that she knows that it is.

Joa’s Tips for Painting Your Home

*As a rule of thumb, and if your budget allows, you should re-decorate every five to seven years

*Light is the most important consideration when choosing colours - and finding ones you really like

*Creating a room is like creating a recipe: each colour is a small ingredient and you need to think about how everything combines

*Combining means it’s not just about what you put on the walls: it’s the skirting boards, the window frames, the joinery, the doors…

*Think about putting flashes of bold colour in unexpected places: on table legs, inside cupboards etc

*When colour combining, consider how nature rarely gets things wrong. Think how well the emerald-green leaves combine with the colour of an aubergine: a combination we feel comfortable with because it’s familiar

*Be careful of feature walls as they can mess up the proportions of a room. Although sometimes they can work. For instance, if you’ve got a long room, a strong colour on the end wall will make it seem more square

*Consider using gloss on your walls. It creates an old fashioned, slightly below-the-stairs feel and is brilliant for bouncing the light around

*Joa Studholme will be appearing at Dorchester Literary Festival on Saturday, October 19 at 12pm at Dorchester Corn Exchange, talking about her latest book, Farrow & Ball: Recipes for Decorating. Tickets cost £10 and can be bought online at dorchesterliteraryfestival.com or from the tourist information centre in Dorchester library.