What Color Should I Paint My Ceiling?
November 29, 2012 § 266 Comments
The ceiling is the fifth wall and many decorators and designers feel that keeping the ceiling white is like “throwing a sheet over the room” (Christopher Lowell said that years ago). But there are a few conditions to consider before painting the ceiling anything other than white:
1) Is your ceiling heavily textured? In many old houses, the ceiling is patterned (and God forbid, “popcorned”) and therefore very difficult to paint well. Also, painting it anything other than white will call attention to it and maybe that’s not what you want. One solution is to have your ceilings replastered to match your walls and painted, but if that’s out of the question, I would stick with white.
2) Is your ceiling a smooth plaster? If so, you should definitely paint it. How lucky you are! See below for what color.
2A) Is your ceiling really high? If so, you can paint it virtually any color that goes with the rest of the room. If you’d like to bring the ceiling down visually, consider a color darker than your wall color or a warm color (both will advance and appear to bring the ceiling down to a level that’s more in scale with your room). Also consider adding crown moulding if it’s not already there. The moulding will also bring the ceiling down by calling your eye’s attention to it. And it really finishes the room.
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2B) Is your ceiling low or average height? Consider painting it a tint of the wall color. If your walls are a medium blue, then your ceiling would be the very lightest blue on the color swatch or even lighter (white with a dash of blue). This will help to round out the room and make the ceiling part of the overall decor — not just that white sheet over the top.
3) Does your room have enough light? Bright white ceilings do help bounce light back into the room so if your room is already dark, pay special attention to the ceiling color. White can be used effectively, but light tints on the ceiling will also reflect light. Just avoid a ceiling color that is going to absorb all the light and leave the room dark.
4) Are you painting a guest bath? I like to paint the wall color right up over the ceiling in a guest bathroom. Doing that makes the room feel larger by blending the walls and ceiling together and avoiding sharp lines and corners. Or do something kind of exotic on the ceiling, like the Moroccan tent (see photo above).
5) Are you painting a bedroom? In what other room do we lie around and stare at the ceiling? Why not paint it something interesting. In a bedroom, the sky’s the limit (literally) — from puffy blue clouds on a backdrop of sky blue to a quilt of squares in different colors (Candice Olson did a fabulous multi-colored geometric ceiling in a master bedroom). And in kids’ rooms, the ceiling is just one more space to use your creativity.
Hope this helps the “Do I paint the ceiling?” dilemma.
houzz, Pinterest, and the Barrage of Creative Ideas
November 20, 2012 § Leave a comment
At last count, there were 867,525 spaces on houzz.com to feed your quest for inspiration. Hours — days –of poring over photos of beautiful designs. And then there’s Pinterest where, by their account, “millions of new pins are added every week.” Is anybody out there feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of ideas??
If you are planning a renovation, big or small, to any part of your house, here are a few tips to avoid creative overload:
-Realize that not every good idea will work in your home. Although that wall color online looks spectacular with the view of the ocean out the window, the same color may look completely different in your room with limited natural light. When you’re choosing wall color, start with your own home, the lighting you have, and the colors, furniture, and artwork in other rooms. A beautiful wall color inspiration is most likely already there.
-Stick with what you love, not something you think you should love because it’s fashionable. As we all know, trends come and go, and unless you want to re-do your home with every new trend, your home will be defined by the period in which the trend was popular. Look at metallic wallpaper from the 70s, for example. If you love it, then go for it. But try to avoid catching a wave only to find yourself tossed up on the beach in a year or two.
-And finally, unless you’re well organized at assigning ideas to a particular project or room as they come cascading into your head via web sites and social media, then focus on one project at a time. Try to avoid mission creep unless you have the budget and time to devote to starting and, most importantly, finishing all your projects. You will be bombarded with ideas and inspiration that may have you ripping up carpet in your family room when you really wanted to work on the bathroom first. Stay focused.
Enjoy the opportunity to see how millions of other creative people have transformed their homes. We are truly living in an age of enlightenment bordering on informational hysteria. Try and stay calm.
Quick Updates for the Holidays
November 20, 2012 § Leave a comment
Do you have friends and family coming to the house for the holidays? Here’s one way to make sure they don’t drive right past the house. Change the numbers on the front so they are visible from the road. There are so many new options out there for something other than the standard big-box-store metal numerals. Be creative.
Zen Holiday Decorating: An Oasis from Mall Madness
November 8, 2012 § Leave a comment
Does your beautifully decorated home brace for the onslaught of holiday decorations every year? When your artfully arranged furniture is sidelined to make space for the tree and your oh-so-subtle color scheme is squashed by the big footed Santa and his reindeer? I feel your pain… 😉
I’m here to help. But before that, if you have children, then forget about it. Do up the most spectacular Christmas you can imagine and enjoy the blinking lights and the kaleidoscope of colors for as long as your children appreciate your home’s transformation. And for the young-at-heart who still enjoy reliving this most festive time, then relax. Go ahead and hang all those old ornaments on the tree. The holidays are for celebrating and reminiscing too.
Now for those of you who would prefer a light touch to the holiday decorating and would like to create an oasis from the mall madness, this tip is for you.
Limit your holiday color scheme of ornaments, ribbons, and decorations to white. That’s it. Then, just as the photo suggests from http://www.traditionalhome.com, add the necessary sparkle with glass ornaments, silver and gold metallic objects to reflect candlelight, and simple greens. You will be amazed at how festive your home looks without even an ounce of Santa’s sleigh red.
Which Came First? The house color or the foundation plantings?
October 1, 2012 § 2 Comments
My guess? Neither. Take a close look at the roof, and the house color palette is revealed. The deep purples and greens of that slate roof present a palette the homeowners can use for their house: rich grape for the siding color tempered by a neutral cream trim and lime green for the accent color to highlight the Victorian embellishments.
But the homeowners did not stop there. To enhance the palette and spread the accent color out onto the landscape, they planted a gorgeous lime green Hydrangea coupled with other lime green plants, shrubs, and ground-cover species. Peeking out from under all that greenery is a purple flowering ground color pulling the whole look together.
Not to be matchy-matchy or anything, but this house rocks. There’s just enough contrast to keep our interest and show off the house detail without introducing new colors that might make the house too busy. Afterall, the house itself has so much detail that you wouldn’t want it to get lost in a rainbow of foundation plantings and annuals.
The Renaissance of Wallpaper: With a twist
September 17, 2012 § Leave a comment
The first thing my husband did when we moved into our house many years ago was rip a long piece of wallpaper off the bathroom wall. “We won’t be keeping this,” he proclaimed. Well, I wasn’t planning to start a bathroom renovation that afternoon (I had to hide the ugly blemish with towels for months), but he certainly had the right idea. All the wallpaper came down eventually and was replaced with paint.
Many of us have visions of homes with old faded wallpaper and knick-knacks everywhere or rooms where every available inch of real estate was covered: ceiling, switch plates, wastebaskets– even the window treatments matched the wallpaper.
The rebirth of wallpaper that we’re experiencing, however, is far different from what you lived through in your grandmother’s parlor.
1) Contemporary wallpaper makes a bold statement either with color, texture, large graphic design, or all three.
2) The wallpaper is a feature of the room, like a piece of art, and not simply a wall covering upon which to layer a hodgepodge of family photos, diplomas, and other objects of interest.
And that’s the major difference. It’s more about what else is going on (or not) in the room and less about the wallpaper itself. Contemporary use of wallpaper involves a more judicious placement in areas like the focal wall in a foyer (as in the photo), the walls in a guest bath, the headboard wall in the master bedroom, and the walls above wainscoting in the dining room. The wallpaper is also selected to be the appropriate scale in the room (you won’t see so many little tiny pink flowers anymore). And the furnishings in a room with bold, contemporary wallpaper harmonize with it, both through color and fabric design and scale.
So be adventuresome. If you’re feeling like your room is just a little too blah, even after you’ve painted a fresh new color, try wallpapering an accent wall. Just for fun. Your grandmother would be proud.
From a Little Girl’s Room to a Teen Girl’s Haven: Navigating the Transformation
September 6, 2012 § Leave a comment
Decorating a teen’s room is way different from decorating a young child’s room, and I’m not just talking about
the comforter and the curtains. When you’re decorating a little girl’s room for the first time (when they’re really little), there’s not much push-back from her. She loves flowers, polka dots, pinks and purples. But as she grows older, she develops her own style and wants to do things her own way. As a decorator, we have to take that into account when we’re called upon to work on a young teen’s room. How to take her very strong requirements for her room and mesh them with the aesthetic sensibilities of mom and dad.
This project is a prime example. The Before Photo shows a bedroom of many colors, stripes and dots in a fairly white room. As you can see from the swaths of color that she painted next to her bed, the teen living there was pretty much done with white walls. So that’s where we started. She picked a cool, vibrant blue-green that was a reflection of her personality (not her mom’s). From there, we found cornflower blue bedding (Pottery Barn) as well as some accent pillows and accessories to pull the colors together.
My major role in this project? To prevent color overload. The remedy? Adding white to the room to offer some visual relief from the intense hues. I found white tone-on-tone polka dot fabric for the window panels (custom-made), a white lamp with a lamp shade that pulled all the colors together (Pottery Barn), and a white fuzzy pillow for the bed (Pier 1). I also added the floral light fixture on the ceiling (Lamps Plus) — a great find for a teen room. The result was a room that all three of us (teen, mom, and decorator) could love.
Before and After Ranch Re-do: Working with the Roof Color
September 4, 2012 § 4 Comments
Perplexed homeowners posted a dilemma on the blog. After deciding to keep the Desert Tan roof and aluminum windows on their newly remodeled 1960s atomic ranch, they struggled to come up with colors for the siding, trim and front door.
Making matters a little more complicated, they panicked (well, you know) when they saw the newly installed aluminum and glass garage doors they had selected and felt they overpowered the house.
Knowing the homeowners did not really like their roof (chosen by previous owners), I offered a couple of paint color options that would coordinate the siding with the roof. Contrasting the siding color with the roof would have made the roof pop off the house– not something the homeowners wanted. (When you’re trying to camouflage something, think blending.) I gave them Mayflower Red (Benjamin Moore HC-49) and Maryville Brown HC-75.
For trim, I suggested they match the paint color to the aluminum windows and garage door. The homeowners did the leg work — Metro Gray 1459. Then to draw the eye along the wonderful curved pathway and over to the front door, we needed color. I suggested something like Charlotte Slate AC-24
or Amethyst Shadow 1441? They went with the Amethyst. I don’t think you’ll see another house just like this one, and that, in the world of curb appeal, is refreshing!
Homeowner: The Mayflower Red pulls the red out of the roofing, makes the aluminum pop and has the added attraction of being different from anything else in the neighborhood without screaming “look at me.”
Outdoor Furniture — On a Quest for the Perfect Adirondack Chair
June 4, 2012 § 9 Comments
With renters arriving in a couple of weeks, I am on a hunt for Adirondack chairs that will replace the rickety old painted wooden ones we have currently at the cottage. There is such a difference in quality and price — I can’t seem to figure out what’s best.
The traditional wooden ones seem to last only a few years. Even reviewers at LLBean are sending theirs back for replacement chairs. After surveying the other offerings online, I went looking for Amish craftsmanship hoping to find something to last a decade or two. What did I find there? Plastic.
This white “poly” chair is made out of plastic bottles and it is guaranteed to last many years (the Amish guarantee is 50!), but I can’t seem to bond with a plastic facsimile of the hand-crafted old originals. Although the “poly” is not supposed to fade, I’ve heard that some colors do. White works for me so that’s not a big issue.
The price is extraordinary — twice or three times that of a wooden Adirondack chair. So that’s another sticking point. Is a plastic chair really worth almost (and in some cases over) $300?
If you have any experience with these Polywood chairs and would like to share that with me, feel free to comment. I’m kind of a purist when it comes to chairs, but they are comfortable. (My husband claims he can tell plastic from the road…). What to do…
Choosing a Paint Color for the Cottage
May 31, 2012 § 3 Comments
It’s time to repaint the cottage — it has been that shade of grassy olive green since about 1970 and I think we’re ready for a chang
e especially since the cottage next door is also green, just a darker shade. You might think that choosing a color for my own place would be easy for me since I work with color all the time. But just like you struggle with paint color schemes, I have to go through that process too.
First of all, what colors are already in the neighborhood? We have dark green on one side, beige siding on the other, and brown and beige two doors away on either side. So that leaves quite a few options.
Next, what color is the roof? It’s a gray metal roof with a white fascia piece in front. The roof doesn’t show from the front, but it’s quite prominent on the sides so roof color is a consideration.
What color are the windows and other non-changing elements? The windows are all white vinyl (I know, but they’re easy maintenance for a cottage). We had the chimney removed (that had been the inspiration for the brick orange Adirondack chair).
So with fandeck in hand, I spun through the color possibilities. I eliminated yellow and white because they would take too many coats to cover the green. Red was thrown around as a possibility but I didn’t like the idea of red next to the dark green. Not summery enough. Orange is a great accent color but our cottage is not interesting enough architecturally to draw that much attention from a wild paint color. That brought me to gray and blue.
I tried some grays, both dark and light, on the Sherwin-Williams paint site and liked several with the gray roof. My reservation was that the cottage would need color added somewhere — otherwise it would look kind of blah. (Note: I LOVE the Nantucket weathered cedar look, but you need salt air to pull that off.)
Finally, I tried blue. Hmmm… not a bad idea. I ended up with a WoodScapes opaque stain in a color called Chesapeake (SW3051) with a cool white trim (Rhinestone– it’s on the blue side of white) and my Adirondack chair color for the accent. I like a dark blue cottage color — it speaks to the lake water in the background and does not attract too much attention from passersby. I also like the contrast with the windows especially for a summer cottage. I used the Adirondack chair color (a custom red-orange) for the doors including the big garage door facing the road. Now it’s easy to find the party.
Your Home & Color Coach 