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The History & Heritage of Our Paint & Paper | Little Greene

A brown paper bag containing brown powder, with a white paint tin resting inside.

History & Heritage

‘Little Greene’ was the name of a tiny 18th-century hamlet just to the east of Manchester in England. It can be seen on ancient maps of the area, including the one on all our paint tins.

Black Little Greene paint tin with grey abstract pattern, next to a close-up of the same pattern against a white background.

Records dating from 1773 show a small company operating on the bank of the rivers Irk and Irwell, called The Little Greene Dye Works. Here, its entrepreneurial owner, Joshua Rowlands, oversaw the supply of pigments and dyes to local weaving mills. The area was central to the boom in cotton trade during the Industrial Revolution.

The Little Greene Paint Company, as it is today, was established very close to this original site. We have seamlessly adopted Joshua Rowlands’ business of formulating colour, and his philosophy of doing so without compromise.

The exterior of Little Greene's head office building with multi-colored stripes at the top and glass windows at the bottom.

Our current headquarters are now located a little further down the road, standing proudly in the heart of an area with a rich and envied manufacturing pedigree. This is where our dedicated team works behind the scenes, from hand-pouring sample pots to creating beautiful new colours and wallpapers for our upcoming collections…

Man in factory wearing safety goggles and a jumpsuit, pouring powder into a container to manufacture Little Greene paints.

A family-run business, with our own factory nestled in the foothills of Mount Snowdon in North Wales, Little Greene is the largest, family-owned independent British paint maker producing a complete range of traditional and modern finishes. Our paint line includes the signature range of hard-wearing, water-based ‘Intelligent Paints’, especially designed to ensure projects are beautiful and last much longer before repainting is required.

Little Greene colours of England Fan Deck in the bottom-middle, with color samples spiraling around it in a rainbow pattern.

We take real pride in our products – each pot is carefully poured, picked and packaged by hand. As a family-run company with our own factory, we know exactly what goes into our products. We only use the highest quality ingredients to produce eco-friendly paints in a beautiful palette of colours.

Four Little Greene sample paint pots in French Grey, Wood Ash, Three Farm Green and Hellebore on top of wallpaper samples.

Our premium quality recipes and highly pigmented formulations mean that our paints have excellent opacity and unrivalled coverage – making them practical, beautiful and very economical too. Our paint colours are steeped in history, with many of them having been recreated from authentic, historic colours found in some of Britain’s most-treasured properties. The result is an incredibly versatile, timeless palette of elegant, muted tones and brighter colours, all designed for the modern interior.