Ted Nightingale mixed the first batches in 1946, and three generations on, the family is still deciding what we paint our houses.
In association with Resene.
After poring over decades’ worth of newsletters that document Resene’s long backstory, we were struck, mostly, by the sense of celebration, collaboration and can-do spirit held in their concise pages. The gritty garage-born start-up founded by Eastbourne builder Ted Nightingale in 1946 has become undeniably interwoven with Aotearoa design and culture.
You name it, and they’ve brushed paths: Resene’s been involved with landmarks as iconic as the Beehive and Sky Tower, to refurbishments of significant historic buildings around the country. Not to mention countless Kiwi homes transformed by colours that came courtesy of a groundbreaking point-of-sale tinting system.
Some of their technical milestones are things we now take for granted. “Getting rid of lead out of our paints, years earlier than the rest of the industry, required a lot of R&D effort,” says Ted’s grandson and current managing director Nick Nightingale. Taking lead out of the tin was a decision about health first, for the people making the paint and the people living with it, and it set the direction for the environmental work that followed. The same thinking produced waterborne Enamacryl and Lustacryl in 1996: an enamel finish without the solvents, which meant less smell through the house and brushes that washed out under the tap.
It was 1976 when the company set up a “truly natural habitat” for consumers and specifiers to understand their product range. The showroom — an ornate 1890s villa on Marion St in central Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington — used every architectural feature to demonstrate how paint, wallpaper and timber finishes would look and feel in practice.
Three years later, Resene reimagined the way they organised and presented their colour palettes, and the people who specify colour for a living took notice. “It’s a knockout,” said architect Gordon Moller at the time, praising a company “ahead of the market — producing the colour range that architects want.”
One joyful example is the bold exterior of architect Roger Walker’s own Wellington home, where a flamboyant expression of sorbet pink and vivid green feels as embedded in the design as the playful form of the architecture.
Designer Sylvia Sandford became Resene’s colour ambassador in 1993 and spent years persuading the trade to be braver with colour. She’s still judging the company’s colour awards.
Alongside the pleasant hum of nostalgia, there remains a curious familiarity to the products that hail from generations past. A plaster-like DIY decorative wall finish called Resene Textucote was available in the 1970s, with various textures achievable, from sweeping arcs to rugged striated lines, each realised by hand. It’s an effect we’ve encountered at homes and baches renovated during that era, and something we can readily imagine being embraced and revamped for today as interiors shift to favouring texture and the imperfection of genuinely handcrafted spaces. Nick Nightingale agrees. “I think there’s a resurgence in paint effects, particularly colour washes that give you a tonal change on a flat or slightly textured surface — that patina of process,” he says. Of course, Resene has responded to this movement towards the tactile, with the launch of the Resene MyArtisan Foundation Coat, an economical alternative to modern-day Venetian plaster finishes.
Observing how everyday consumers approach colour has always been a driver of innovation. Test pots came about because, while working in the Marion St shop, Nick saw for himself how much time was taken up tinting 500ml cans so customers could trial different shades. “As we relaunched colour charts with more and more colours, and you’d have, say, half a dozen different reds of varying shades, it became very obvious. Testpots were a no-brainer.” That they have now become valued in their own right, and taken on a life of their own, is just part of the way the brand’s technologies are woven into our society.
Not that, after so many years, Nick finds consumer behaviour predictable. When Resene ‘Black White’ became hugely popular, many thought it a “silly” name for a colour, and Nick wondered how a very very pale grey would fly. “It’s regularly in the top five colours,” he says, surprised.
Our personal favourites amidst all the info were the vintage paint colour charts — a genuine joy to behold.
As generations of Nightingales have discovered, the Kiwi taste waxes and wanes. And what was popular 30 or 40 years ago comes around in circles. Our deep dive revealed limewash textures taking hold in the early 1990s, and the metallic paint trend emerging just ahead of the new millennium.
According to Nick, tastes change but quality is the foundation of continued success. Resene has long paved the way for designers and homeowners to bring a vision to life, enabling a philosophy of joy, curiosity and experimentation around colour. Backing the talent of the local industry, Nick says, “I think we have our own style, our own design. We should be pretty proud of that.” The next chart will tell us what we’re willing to try in the decade ahead.
resene.co.nz
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