SORREL Paint - 4

Historic company S.G. Bailey Paints Ltd started making paint in Stroud, Gloucestershire in 1896. Now, at the helm since 1989, Richard Townsend has become an expert at creating bespoke paints.

A part of the business since he was a teen working summer jobs, making things is Richard’s calling; creating colours from scratch, from pigment to paint still excites him 35 years on. We have worked closely with him to deliver our high quality paint collection. 

Richard and his chemist Nick, have also been instrumental in helping us to explore fossil fuel free paint binder innovations. 

Check out our range of Nature-inspired shades created to bring beauty and creativity into the home while reflecting the principles of sustainability that makes House of Hackney a B Corp brand.

Since the day our House was built, a sense of compassion for people and planet has served as the foundation of everything we do. House of Hackney is evolving from a B Corp sustainable brand to a regenerative one. This means doing things differently to bring about social and economic change, promoting the restoration of Nature. It means going beyond simply ‘sustaining’ and instead, actively making things better.

Our ambition is to create products that honour Future Generations. We are doing this by evolving our supply chain to source regenerative cotton directly from farmers, exploring wood fibre free wallpaper innovations and substituting fossil fuel derived ingredients in our paint for plant based alternatives. That’s just our main categories. We embrace opportunities to champion and trial material innovations such as mycelium and microbes in all products and packaging.

As a business rooted in the beauty of the natural world, we believe it's imperative we hold ourselves to account for our impact on Nature and the quality of life we leave behind for the generations to come. 

In 2023, we gave Mother Nature and Future Generations legal personhood on our board, as a director. This means a person, independent of our business, ensures that in every decision made across all departments, our impact on Nature (including human wellbeing) is considered. They actively challenge our work and progress to becoming a Nature-centred business. Read more about how the director works here.

Our paint colours are made-to-order by bespoke paint experts Bailey Paints, leaving little production waste (less than 0.5%). We do not hold stock and paint is not mixed unless it’s ordered.

Our paints are high-performing, durable, water-based and classed as low-VOC (less than 1% per litre). They are packaged in a recyclable aluminium tin (including the handle) and comes with a complimentary stirrer made from offcuts of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified timber, left over from paintbrush production.

As with the majority of high quality paints on the market, the binder used in our formulation is acrylic, a fossil fuel derived material. However, we are working with Bailey Paints on a long-term plant based binder development that meets our performance requirements, taking out the need for fossil fuel based substances.