Trend Spotter: Roz sees colours where ordinary people just see beige - a useful skill in her line of work

Roz Mannock combined an interest in fabrics with a flair for business when she started Paint & Paper Emporium. She tells Holly Willis how she went about it

Paint & Paper in Cambridge, with its sage green shop front and resident miniature dachshund Milly, is an interiors mecca. The walls are stacked from floor to ceiling with designer paint tins in every conceivable hue and tables are laden with fabric books of covetable cloth. Roz Mannock started the business after making curtains from her spare room and juggling a day job at Laura Ashley with raising two small children. Today she offers bespoke curtains, wooden blinds, designer wallpaper and a vast array of chic paints.

‘I had a love of fabrics and had bought a house with lots of windows so I needed curtains for myself,’ says Roz.

‘I went on curtain-making courses to learn how to do it properly and after that, friends started asking me to make their curtains.’

That was in the 1980s in St Ives, but after a divorce Roz moved to Cambridge, took bookkeeping classes and in 1994 founded Paint & Paper Emporium. Roz admits it was a sheer ‘determination to be successful’ that drove her.

‘Setting up a business is always hard work. Life is about compromises and I had to find childminders for my children.’

These days she doesn’t sew the curtains in her spare room any more but has them made in Norfolk and can put people in touch with a curtain fitter who will double check measurements or put up poles. This has given her more time to spend on other areas of the business and explore new products that catch her eye.

‘I wanted to work more with paint and colour. I had trained staff to make curtains for me so I felt I could step back from the physical work and change the business slightly. Things have evolved gradually.

The business flourishes partly because Roz is good at spotting gaps in the market, like the interest in eco paints such as Little Greene or new fabric designers like Lorient. Fashion plays a part as well, with current tastes leaning towards neutral shades of paint matching a feature wall covered in wallpaper.

‘It’s about being able to visualise how something will look and you either have an eye for colour or you don’t,’ says Roz.

‘People can’t always tell what paint goes with what wallpaper or which curtains will complement a scheme. We can advise our customers about that and spend time with them.’

Roz and her team are so good they match by eye. Where an untrained eye just sees beige, Roz can detect a yellow or pink base colour that has other pigments added to it. This is a useful skill considering some of the things she has been asked to find matching paint for.

‘People come into the shop with bits of china or kitchen cupboards and we once had a request for paint to match the client’s skin tone,’ she laughs.

The toughest part of the job isn’t unusual requests, it’s the paperwork and Roz can spend up to three days a week just dealing with things like invoices and stock levels. The pluses far outweigh the minuses, however, as Roz sums up: ‘The best thing is having something that was a hobby and making it into a job. It’s great to work on something you enjoy.’

Paint & Paper Emporium 01223 506 136, paintandpaperemporium.com