The true colours of the Royal Pavilion in Brighton have been discovered by an artist who painstakingly stripped away up to 30 layers of paint.

Stig Evans, artist-in-residence at Brighton's Taj Mahal, has revealed how the spectacular interior of the Regency building has changed through the ages.

In the saloon, the central room, he found the dome had featured four different skies.

Mr Evans spent three months exposing the 200-year-old pigments and reproducing the colours so visitors could see them in their original settings.

Funded by the Arts Council and working with the Royal Pavilion's conservation team, he took samples of the paints and examined them under a microscope.

He then used sheets of glass to display some of the original colours and has created illustrations with intricate cross sections of the rooms they came from, using views by architect John Nash as a guide.

Mr Evans said: "There have been some very dramatic changes. I have integrated them into a series of artworks to make people look at the building in a different way, rather than seeing it as a final thing."

The results of Mr Evans' work can be seen in the Royal Pavilion for the last time tomorrow. They will be taken down on Thursday and moved to Gallery 100 in Queen's Road, Brighton for the Brighton Festival from May 5.