The paints used to decorate the servants' quarters in the hit TV show are now commercially available. So how will Empire Grey look in an ordinary modern kitchen?
It is possible, in certain lights, to view the past 15 years of interior design as the search for the perfect grey. "Grey" used to be a good word for someone dull, but never something you would want on your walls. These days there is a rainbow of greys: enough shades and sufficiently titillating to name a bestselling work of erotic fiction. And what is the one tantalising little rectangle everyone remembers on the Farrow & Ball paint chart? "Elephant's breath." Now the quest for peak grey, the grey that breaks free of neutrality to star in its own right, has become more refined. Two new greys are on the market, but what lifts these above the riffraff is that they are straight off the walls of Downton Abbey. To clarify, they are straight off the walls of below stairs at Downton Abbey - but don't let that put you off.
The paint is made by Mylands, which launched in 1884 when John Myland opened his first shop in Stockwell, south London. Since the 1920s the company has supplied paint to Pinewood and Elstree studios, which is why it has coloured the walls of every Bond film, Harry Potter and Mr Selfridge as well as Downton Abbey. The colours available to consumers (at coloursoflondon.co.uk) as London Brown No 4 and Sinner have been in Game of Thrones and Doctor Who respectively.
Empire Grey is the colour of Mr Carson's pantry. Amber Grey is the colour of Mrs Patmore's kitchen. Both are soon going to be the colour of a friend's basement in east London, kindly donated for the purposes of this article at least until the decorator repaints the place on Thursday. The excitement of being given someone else's house keys and five litres of paint is not to be underestimated: I would recommend other people try this as a pick-me-up.
A scan of the open-plan kitchen-diner reveals a high-gloss berry-red kitchen with long steely handles and buffed plastic chairs. Everything shimmers. Will MFI units work with Downton walls?
First up is Amber Grey. This looks in the tin how coffee used to look before the western world learned to appreciate beans: a thick, warm gloopy sludge. Like so many greys, once on the wall it looks grey no more, more a strong whiff of khaki. But it is working pretty well with the sombre, chalky black of the stove. The plastic chairs are jarring, though. Maybe plastic just isn't very Downton.
Now it's Empire Grey's turn. It is a milkier version of Amber Grey, a cup of something comforting you would reach for before bed. This might work for the owner of this house - alongside the vats of white paint awaiting Thursday's pro is a tin of Eggshell called Rum Caramel. I'm rolling it out above the hob. I don't know about Mr Carson's pantry, but next to the brick-shaped tiles and the cast-iron casserole dishes it is starting to give an industrialised domestic vibe that is not displeasing.
Time to examine the handiwork. Empire Grey is persuasive. I'm going to leave the tin in case the owner changes his mind about all that white paint. But Amber Grey isn't working for me. It is an excellent colour for Mrs Patmore's kitchen, but maybe there is a reason it was below stairs - would the Dowager Countess have wanted to eat in a room this colour? You might feel as if you had been served up, wrapped inside a vine leaf. Tell us your thoughts below.
Downton Abbey in your kitchen. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian