Your Home & Color Coach

Neutral doesn’t need to be blah. A neutral color scheme can have color, from tans to greens to blues to light yellows. The big difference between “neutral” and other color schemes is that neutral schemes do not use accent colors that are opposite on the color wheel. For example, in a room with sage green walls, a complimentary color scheme might include a red chair or red pillows on the sofa whereas a neutral color scheme would replace the complimentary color with texture.

Another difference between a neutral scheme and other designs is that neutral rooms tend not to have a mixture of lots of large patterns. Neutral schemes do not want to attract particular attention to one piece of furniture but create an overall restful look.

When you are creating a neutral living room:

• Add Texture. If you are keeping a monochromatic color scheme, whether it’s beige, white, green or blue, you need to create visual interest in the room. And texture is a great way to do that. By adding nubby pillows and a soft mohair throw on the sofa, woven wood blinds on the windows, and a sisal rug on the floor, you have added various textures to the room and created not only tactile but visual interest. The textures stand out against the neutral backdrop.
• Keep your large furniture pieces solid. A large flowered, multi-colored sofa does not lend itself to a neutral color scheme unless the pattern is tone-on-tone (various shades of the same hue). The fabric on the furniture can have lots of texture, however, and even a small pattern. But the sofa needs to read as one color when you stand back. Keeping the large pieces in a solid color allows for maximum versatility. You won’t get tired of them either.
•  Use colorful artwork as your focal point. Instead of using color in your furnishings, let colorful art attract all the attention. Just like an art gallery has white walls to highlight the color in the artwork, a neutral background is ideal for featuring an art collection in your living room.
• Add color with your accessories. As a decorator, it’s really fun to use a neutral color scheme and add color with pots, baskets, art, vases, flowers, candles, and collectibles. Then you can change the color with the seasons or when you get tired of it. I like to have winter pillows and summer pillows. My winter pillows are a red Ralph Lauren floral print (kind of stuffy but warm) and my summer pillows are beige and light yellow striped with fringe (fun and carefree looking). And with my neutral living room, I can change the accessories as new colors come into fashion. Much cheaper than redoing the living room every few years.

Consider neutral when a) you’re selling your house (neutral schemes allow buyers to see themselves in your home); b) you live in a small house without much light (a monochromatic color scheme will make the room appear larger); and 3) you like to change your mind about color frequently (instead of repainting and recovering the furniture every few years, change out the accessories only). Neutral color schemes never go out of style. You can add to them and subtract from them as your tastes and home interior styles change.

Location, location, location. You’ve just closed on the purchase of an older colonial in a beautiful, tree-lined neighborhood that’s perfect for the kids. But the house clearly needs updating. There is old dingy wallpaper throughout, many of the rooms have dark wood panelling, and the lighting, if you can call it that, is totally inadequate. Where to begin.

1) Call the electrician. The first thing to do is update the lighting. Plan to invest in recessed cans in the living room, family room, and kitchen. The result will be dramatic. Recessed lights around the perimeter of the room will highlight any artwork that you put up and will add a nice glow to the room. Remember to install dimmer switches on everything.

2) Move on to your front hallway. Is it dark? Replace the hanging light fixture that’s been there since the early ’60s. And while you’re at the home improvement store, why not pick up a new light fixture for the guest bath and a mirror to replace the existing medicine cabinet.

3) Plan your new color scheme by selecting a palette of three basic colors, all of which go together. The easiest way to do this is to choose colors that have the same hue value, and in our example, the values will be on the light side since the homeowners prefer light walls and it’s dark in there already.  For example, for this house, we chose a light yellow tint (C2’s Filtered 3121), a fresh pale green (C2’s Lichen 4262), and a very airy blue (C2’s Alpine 5137).

4) Distribute those three colors throughout the public spaces. We decided to use the yellow for the front hallway and up the stairs, the green for the living room, the blue for the dining room, and the green again for the family room.

5) Add accent colors where needed. We chose a slightly darker blue (C2’s Rivulet 5144) to go beneath the chair rail in the dining room and in the half bath off the hallway, a darker green (C2’s Balsam 4073) to go on the kitchen backsplash next to the adjoining light green family room and behind the built in white shelves in the family room.

6) Pick your trim and ceiling color. We chose Benjamin Moore’s White Dove semi-gloss. Keeping the same trim color throughout the whole house makes the house feel more spacious and less chopped up. And the creamy white color ages very well and blends with white sinks and other appliances without standing out too much. As for the panelling in the family room, it will be White Dove as will the built-in cabinetry. We chose a Super White for the ceiling to give off maximum light.

And that’s it. We chose a very pleasing palette of colors that will provide a nice backdrop to their furniture and since we chose colors that go together, the house will have harmony and a sense of flow from room to room.

Whether you are choosing a landscape palette to coordinate with your house colors or giving your living room a fresh kick, contrasting colors give that punch of color that just says Wow.

The colors that are opposite on the color wheel are complimentary — they offer the most contrast and add the biggest pizzazz to your decorating scheme. We already know that adding blue-and-green pillows to a blue sofa will make the colors blend, but adding orange pillows to the blue sofa will make those colors “pop.” And the same is true when you’re planning your front yard landscape.

For example, if you have a blue or blue-gray house with a black door and want to add some drama and curb appeal, consider focusing on oranges and orangey yellows (like Stella de Oro daylilies, for example) in your garden. The complimentary colors enhance each other and make both the house and the garden stand out.

If you have a brick house, the green plantings are really going to stand out. I would suggest using a mixture of greens including some of the yellow-green shrubs (like a jade barberry) and the yellow-green hosta to enhance both the garden and the brick.

If you have a yellow house with a black door, a hot pink rhododendron bush in the front yard will look smashing. You don’t have to use the exact color that is opposite on the color wheel. You can use the colors that are on either side of the opposite color. You’ll still get contrast and a more sophisticated palette.

Use your front door as your inspiration. If you’ve chosen a contrasting color for the front door of your house, say a rusty red on a louisburg green (Ben Moore HC113) house, carry that color into the front yard with a red azalea, a burning bush, and a bed of red tulips. 

If you’ve chosen a lighter green house (like prescott green, Ben Moore HC140) and a dark purple door, add a beautiful lilac bush to your yard and other purple shrubs and flowers. This latter color scheme does not use contrasting reds to go opposite the green but adjacent (analogous) colors in the blue and purple family. Although the contrast is not as dramatic, coordinating the landscape and door color still makes an eye-catching curb appeal. The key is to choose plants that bloom at different times so you have continuous color in your yard.

The English garden look with a variety of colors in the garden is traditional and quite lovely. But if you’d like real drama in your front yard landscape, consider sticking to just one color family in the garden. My sister-in-law has a stunning totally blue garden with every kind of blue and blue-purple flower mixed with white flowers to bring out the color. White always enhances color, inside and out.

If your house is white, you have free reign of the color wheel. But my best advice is to select flowers and flowering shrubs that have the same color intensity instead of mixing the bright flowers with the pastels. If you stick with either all bright or all pastel, you can mix all the colors and create a spectacular landscape.

Just a little color planning that extends from the house, trim, and front door colors to the landscape plantings will give your yard that finished designer-inspired look.

Every home has a few quirks: from small windows and short ceilings to odd angles and peculiar niches. And it’s not just old houses either. Even new houses have challenges, from oversized rooms that echo to a lack of wall space for art (we’ll deal with those problems later). Here are a couple of quick tips that won’t cost much money but will help you solve some common decorating dilemmas.

Problem 1: Lots of small windows. How can I disguise them and make them look bigger?

Solution: Correct the placement of your window treatments. To disguise the fact that your windows are too small, first remove all the curtains, valances, panels, and anything else that’s currently on the windows. Then take a look at the window placement on the wall. Is there a lot of space above the window between the window frame and the ceiling or moulding? If so, terrific.

Reposition your curtain rod so that it’s about two inches from either the ceiling or the moulding. A 14″ valance hung from just below the ceiling should not cover anything more than the wood and possibly a pulled up window shade at the top of the window. That trick will maximize the visual height of your window and maximize the light coming through it.

If you have panels, make sure they stack outside the window and do not cover anything more than the wood window frame on either side. That will increase the visual width of your window without compromising any of the light.

Bottom line: Your window treatments can be larger than your window and hung higher and wider, and that trick will make your windows appear larger than they really are.

Problem 2: The ceilings in my ranch are only 7′ high. Is there any way to make the room feel taller?

Solution: Hang vertical panels on the windows instead of horizontal valances. Just like vertical lines on clothing can make someone look taller, the same trick works for room height. If you have a ranch or a cape with a large picture window in the living room and a very short ceiling, avoid the temptation to put a long horizontal valance over the window. Instead, hang panels (vertical striped panels would be terrific) on either side of the window. The vertical lines will add height to the room. If you’d prefer no window treatments at all, consider painting tone-on-tone vertical stripes on the walls. Again, the vertical lines will add height.