When Tiling Goes Over the Top — Literally
February 16, 2011 § 3 Comments
If you have ANY plans to sell your home within the next, say, 10 years, I do not recommend dipping your bathroom in a vat of mosaic glass tiles. I know they are stunningly effervescent especially in cool swimming pool shades of blues and greens, but my gut tells me that the extreme application of almost any material will become the “avocado green” of the next generation of home buyers.
When Leslie Marshall cautioned, “Choose your color confidently because retiling can be a costly venture,” (http://www.bhg.com/decorating/color/colors/add-color-without-paint/) she might have added that you should think twice before tiling every surface at ALL!
I know that floor-to-ceiling (including the ceiling!) tile is becoming popular in newly created “spa” bathrooms — yes, they’re easy to keep clean and they look spectacular too. Just keep in mind that somebody is going to have to chisel that color down from the rafters when the time comes to prepare your home for sale. Chances are pretty good that we will have moved our design aesthetic along to new ideas by then and your bathroom will be “just so last decade.”
The alternative? Think longevity for your bathroom. Add trendy color in ways that will be switched out easily either by you or whoever gets to whip your home into shape for resale. A little bit of tile color in the bathroom– on the floor, in the shower area, or around the mirror–will go a long way toward modernizing your bathroom without taking the room over the top.
Adding Smart Color to Any Room
February 9, 2011 § Leave a comment
Spring is coming and are we ready! It’s time to add color to our homes. But before you drag all your furniture to the middle of the floor, take down all the artwork, and dash off to the paint store for a can of Chivalry Copper SW6353 or Chartreuse SW0073, stop! Think about how you want to add color to your room, especially if it’s a trendy new color hot off the pages of STIR Magazine (www.swstir.com).
If you are the type of person who loves to dive into a color trend head first and is not daunted by the idea of switching it all out when the next trend rolls in, then you are all set. But if you are the type of person who desperately wants to update your room but you are not planning to update again for many years, then I’m really talking to you.
Adding smart color to your room means painting the walls and installing tile and other architectural materials in a color that will stand the test of time and hold up to upcoming color trends without making your house look dated. Remember Harvest Gold? Avocado Green? How many of us are stuck in houses where the owners put a color trend into a fixture that would need to stay there for 20 years??
Here’s a way to stay current or get trendy in a smart way. Put the color in the items and materials that can be changed easily later. In this bedroom featured on the BHG site in a piece by Debra Wittrup (www.bhg.com/decorating/color/schemes/cozy-color-schemes-for-every-room), the designer painted the walls a warm taupe– flexible and adaptable to almost any color scheme. Then the wonderful melon color was added in the window panels, the lampshade, the pillows, bed linens, and accessories. If the home owner gets tired of melon, out it goes to be replaced by another fun color scheme with relative ease.
Now, granted paint is cheap and relatively easy to switch out, but trendy paint colors can also be applied to small pieces of furniture, like a wooden table or chair, instead of the four walls of your room. Accent walls are another way to add smart color to any room without the hassle and expense of a complete overhaul.
Enjoy color! Be smart about it!
Banish the Blues with Uplifting Hues
February 4, 2011 § 1 Comment
As I ran around my house the other day screaming, “I need natural light!” I was reminded of the adorable card I received awhile back with an 8-year-old’s words of wisdom captured creatively by © Kate Harper Designs. Could such a simple suggestion for getting yourself out of the winter doldrums be expressed more eloquently? BTW, you’ll love Kate’s whole collection — check it out at http://kateharperdesigns.com/.
Just like the lack of natural light in the winter can affect our moods, so can color. And of course, color and light (or the lack of it) work together.
The other morning as I turned the lights on again in my living room for yet another dreary gray wintry day, I glanced at the wall behind the sofa one last time. That’s it! No more dark and dramatic — I cannot stand it any longer. I dashed to the garage for the can of primer and rolled away my winter blahs. What a transformation! All of a sudden the room felt lighter and brighter and amazingly enough, so did I!
The same thing happened when I moved my office into my son’s old north-facing bedroom. The wall color he had chosen was rich and cozy and cave-like — we even painted his ceiling to create the mood he requested. It worked for him since sleeping in there did not seem to be a problem. But for me? Forget it. I tried adding lamps and task lighting, but the dark walls drove me nuts. Again, I dragged the paint primer from the garage, threw down a drop cloth and primed over the entire room from ceiling on down. Unbelievable — we went from cave-like to cathartic in one afternoon!
The lack of color in a room can be just as depressing as colors that are too dark without adequate light. Anyone who has builder-white walls will note that the white turns to gray in the shadows. And although gray is the new beige for neutral wall color, if it’s not for you, then paint it out!
Warm yellows like Ben Moore’s Sweet Butter (171) will certainly brighten your day. And fresh springy greens like Folk Art (528) will liven up a gray-green that’s bringing you down. Add a little Sea View (836) to a piece of furniture in your room and you’ll think you’re on vacation! I painted the walls in my new office a whisper of yellow called Marble White (Ben Moore 942) and voila! Let there be light!
So if the winter blahs have you feeling blue, take the greeting card’s sage advice and paint yourself (or your room) a different color. Since our homes are extensions of ourselves, then it makes perfect sense that brightening our spirits may be as easy as picking a different wall color. It worked for me!
Can I Paint My Ceiling Dark?
January 22, 2011 § Leave a comment
Next time you’re in a large restaurant or a public building, look up at the ceiling. If it’s like the one in this old library in Nashua, New Hampshire, it’s dark. Of course, this ceiling is three stories high. The effect of the dark ceiling is to bring it down visually and make the enormous space seem a little cozier to us way down on the floor.
The same is true in a room in your home. If you have a large space with a high ceiling and particularly if the ceiling really feels too high, then painting it a dark color will square out the room and make its dimensions seem a little more homey.
Unfortunately, if you have a 7-ft ceiling in a bedroom, a dark ceiling might make you feel like you’re the batter in a waffle iron. Cozy is not quite the word to describe that effect. So I recommend a lighter tint for smaller rooms. You can still move away from the white ceiling, but just use a tint of the wall color (10-30% of the full-strength hue). Or use a coordinating tint — something you pull from the bedding or other accent pieces. Using a tint on the ceiling will highlight any crown moulding you have in the room and will unify the color scheme.
Caution: because the ceiling is horizontal and does not get much light shining on it, any color you choose will appear darker up there than it does on the paint chip. Try a sample board first before tackling the ceiling job — a neck-breaker and mess-maker, for sure!
Thinking about Marble for Your Kitchen Counters?
December 10, 2010 § 1 Comment
Doesn’t a marble countertop look just terrific in the magazine? There’s something about that smooth creamy finish that really appeals to our desire for a clean, uncluttered look. But looks are deceiving. If you are at the countertop decision stage of your kitchen renovation, think twice about selecting marble. Before you get too caught up in its beauty, take a close look at a sample that has been passed around a bit. Anything catch your eye and send up a red flag?? Those not-so-little dings and scratches on the sample might end up on your countertop. Just so you know… there are more durable options out there if maintenance is an issue.
Having said that, if your vision for your dream kitchen is something out of the French countryside, then by all means, marble is the way to go. It screams fresh baguettes and croissants! The dings and scratches acquired over time become part of the patina of the kitchen — and really part of the overall French country kitchen design. If you are a baker, you might include (as one of my clients did) a marble bake station only (the rest of the countertop was soapstone). Or consider a marble vanity top for your guest half-bath.
A little bit of marble in the right place is a wonderful thing.
Flooring Challenges: Working around the color scheme
November 15, 2010 § 4 Comments
Are you living with a slate floor from the early ’80s? Many of you are. Slate is a wonderful material for the foyer as it’s easy to mop up after muddy boots and dogs trample through. But many slate floors have a distinct color palette (the gray-greens, blue-greens, purples and rusty reds) all in one small square footage. Busy? Yes. And out-dated? Yup.
Besides throwing a rug over it or replacing it, the other approach is to embrace the color palette presented to you by the previous owners. Currently, the gray-blue-greens are quite popular in fabric lines and even paint stores. 
And purple is a great accent color. So if you are updating your foyer and are cursing the flooring, take heart. Pull a palette from the floor at least for the foyer area. Blending the floor with the surroundings will make it less of a color feature in your room.
And as always, create a focal point just inside the front door. A large piece of art, a bench, or a mirror– something to draw the eye upward away from the floor.
If you are planning to install new flooring in your entryway, choose a neutral that will stand up to decades of wall color changes and will look just as terrific 20 years from now as it does today.
How Bold House Colors Can Work
September 30, 2010 § 2 Comments
What is more refreshing than a creamsicle — that delicious pairing of tangy orange with smooth creamy vanilla! That’s just how I would describe these two houses — absolutely luscious!
Although we don’t often see orange as a house color, the addition of creamy gray-white either as trim color or as part of the architecture makes the combo work. The result is warm and happy without going off the color charts of good taste.
The stucco example here is a house turned patisserie on the grounds of Versailles in France. The other example is a modern home, one of the creative designs by Victoria Mohar of MoharDesign in Somerville, Massachusetts. It is so refreshing to see creative color combinations that work and that push the house color envelope a bit.
If you’re introducing a bold color into your exterior color scheme, pair it with a well-respected neutral, like creamy vanilla. The result will be refreshment for your neighborhood.
Paint Color and Home Staging
September 7, 2010 § Leave a comment
Decorating a house and selling it are two different things. Although the original rich yellow paint color created a warm and cozy kitchen feeling, warm and cozy in real estate jargon translates into small. And when it comes to kitchens, it seems, the bigger the better.
To show this kitchen to better advantage, we chose a calmer paint color that created less contrast with the ceiling color. That little trick raised the ceiling in the room and created a more open feeling — translated: bigger. Other than removing a piece of art from the wall and replacing a couple of light bulbs, no additional changes were made to the room.
So although you may feel that the kitchen lost its personality when the paint was neutralized (and neutral doesn’t mean beige — more on that in another post), creating a neutral palette allowed the actual selling features of the room to come forward: shiny hardwood floors, solid wood cabinets, large decorative window, center island with cooktop, updated lighting. You get the picture…
Sew a Simple Window Topper
August 9, 2010 § Leave a comment
I do own a sewing machine (a hand-me-down), but I would not call myself much of a seamstress. I sew when I feel inspired or I find a fabric I cannot live without. These window toppers were so easy that I had to share. If you cannot sew a straight line, pick stripes for your fabric. Infinitely easier than everything else.
Cut rectangles of fabric and lining, allowing enough extra for your seams and your rod pocket at the top. Then with right sides together, sew along the edges of your rectangle leaving a little space at the end to turn the fabric right side out. Press the box, turn over one edge and hand-stitch a rod pocket. You’re almost done.
Once you’ve hung your new valances, then you can add a little style by cinching up the fabric in a couple of places (maybe along either edge and in the middle if your valances are wide enough). Use a needle and thread to tack in place. Voila!! Little custom valances in an afternoon!
Banish Old Brass with Paint
August 5, 2010 § 6 Comments
Brass will be back at some point, but there are lots of alternative metals on the market these days that make shiny, brassy… well… brass seem really dated and ordinary. I see these brass candelabra chandeliers everywhere. I even had one in my own home until I decided I couldn’t stand it anymore.
I suppose I could have replaced it at relatively low cost, but then I would have to take it down, etc, etc. I decided that the quickest fix was to paint it. So I got my tallest ladder, moved the table out of the way, and primed the brass. All of it. Then I gave it a coat of matte black acrylic paint. (I was liking it better already.) I then drew on the inner artist somewhere in me to apply several different colors: dark brown, burnt umber, lighter brown, in kind of a faux finish of sorts to make the finished product look more like oil-rubbed bronze (my version).
I even painted the little candlesticks a creamy yellow, found leather-like chandelier shades at my local home improvement store, and used a scrap of fabric for a chain cover. There. All set — I love it. Time to put the ladder away.
If you have old lighting in your home, you can either replace it or paint it! Just remember when working with lighting of any kind, turn off the power first!
Your Home & Color Coach 