Carol was in a quandary earlier this year trying to decide on the perfect colour to paint the outside of her windows. Why don’t you go for a nice sophisticated grey, suggested a friend. Carol dabbed on some grey paint from a sampler pot. Immediately, she felt flat and downhearted.

“Colour brings happiness. It lifts and energises me,” says Carol. She defied her friend and chose a strong, vibrant red called Picture Gallery for her window lintels and Middleton Pink, both by Farrow & Ball, for the body of the house. When she first set eyes on her newly painted house, she was overcome with joy. “I felt myself soaring with happiness,” she says.

Carol’s Georgian farmhouse in the north Cumbrian fellside village of Cumrew is a crazy carnival of colour with purple and pink the current hot favourites. The astonishing thing for those of us with a less daring colour palette is that it works. Beautifully.

The house is a perpetual project with colours, textiles and accessories constantly revised.

Carol, a Pilates teacher, national champion time trial cyclist, and a Carlisle Living columnist, moved there with her husband in 2008 and its walls are a riot of ever-changing jewel colours.

Perhaps the room that best reflects Carol’s free spirit and uninhibited obsession with colour is the kitchen. This hub of family life is a rainbow of colours with pink and yellow doors, green walls, deep emerald cupboards, a mint green telephone, a yellow mixer, a lime green retro Smeg fridge and a pink tiled floor.

* This article first appeared in Carlisle Living