Carnival in Portugal celebrates the transition from winter to spring, the end of darkness and the beginning of light. The annual festival marks the start of Lent in the Christian calendar, with colourful parades and samba music filling the streets of every town and city from Porto to Faro. This year, carnival falls on 4 March, so now is the perfect time to get in the mood and turn your home into a riot of colour. Aah, go on, don’t you feel happy when you look at the colourful pictures on this page? Of course, you do, so let the carnival spirit inspire you and make your house sing!
I’ve always been jealous of the Portuguese having a spring carnival, and I felt cheated not being able to enjoy the tradition growing up in the UK. You feel like a mole crawling out of a hole after a winter in Britain. Months of living under a dark, wet blanket while counting the days until spring really takes its toll on the population. No such enforced hibernation in the Algarve, even in the depths of winter; there is light and a cocktail of beautiful colours around us. The Portuguese have no idea what we have to go through in the UK. They don’t deserve a carnival; it’s not fair!
My oldest friend and I used to have our own little ritual to celebrate the beginning of spring. Every 1 March, we’d exchange presents and share a collective sigh of relief that we’d made it through another gruelling winter. We’d get over-excited and go out coat-less, stand shivering outside a pub clutching large glasses of rosé saying we don’t care if it’s cold, we’re just so happy the days are longer. The elation of getting up for work in the daylight would last about a week and then came April, when every year the beautiful blossom would get battered into submission, the poor tulips lashed with rain and the ground turned into a bog. By May, the central heating and slippers were back on and we’d have to admit that it’s not just light we crave, it’s flippin’ sun and warmth and colour!
The natural landscape of Portugal is a carnival of colour all year round. We could benefit from bringing some of it into our homes and creating energising spaces, but most of us are too shy to try. Maybe it’s because we can’t compete with the colours of the Algarve – no shade we paint our walls could ever compare to a sky so piercingly blue, cliffs so deeply orange and bougainvillea so shockingly pink. I include myself in this because, although I love colour and have turquoise in every room of my house, I wouldn’t dare throw yellow into the mix or add a splash of violet. I balance my brights with neutrals and woods and I don’t do clashing colours, so you could say I’m a colour conservative.
We all need a bit more colour in our lives, even if we don’t know it. There’s something so magical about witnessing a rainbow in all its fleeting beauty, no matter how old you are. Seeing colours dancing in front of your eyes makes you want to do a little shimmy yourself. (So long as they are loving each other and not fighting – like bright blue and red together, that combination always makes me wince.) Doesn’t it lift your mood when you walk down a street of brightly coloured houses or step into someone’s home for the first time to find their kitchen is bright green, or see a grey old man wearing an outrageously colourful outfit? Speaking of quirky old men, my 89-year-old father has a lovely new girlfriend who’s got him wearing pink trousers and lemon jumpers, neon sliders and a jaunty rainbow scarf. He’s also sporting a little ponytail these days and changes the colours of the hairband depending on which team has won the football, but that’s another story.
We let our imagination run wild when we’re decorating a child’s room; we revel in colour and pattern and all rules about taste go out of the window. But something happens as we get older; it’s like the colour police step in and tell us the only way is grey. Why can’t adult spaces be happy and playful? You can have a grown-up room that’s colourful and stylish at the same time. Colour is not reserved for banana-print wallpaper and rocket-motif duvet covers. People will feel good if they walk into your home and it’s bright and colourful. They’ll start to loosen up and tell you lots of gossip, which is always a good thing!
So please, let’s be a bit daring and experiment. A colourful home will make you feel festive every day, and if you get tired of living in a rainbow and want to hang up your dancing shoes, you can always go back to beige until next year’s carnival.
Main image: A woman in a carnival outfit Loulé, Algarve. Royalty-free stock photo taken by Elena Svetleyshaya
