Your Home & Color Coach

It’s back. Call it turquoise or a bluer version of seafoam but it’s back. Resurrected from the ’70s, turquoise is popping up everywhere from bathrooms to master bedrooms, to kitchens. It is a fresh, youthful hue that is both soothing and inspiring and it ranges from the bluer version, for example, tropical teal (Benjamin Moore’s #732) and the ice cold jack frost (Ben Moore #729), to the greener version, for example, the darker floradale isle (#581) and the pale tropical paradise (#575).

Paired with crisp white only, turquoise looks terrific, but a little bit dated. Same with the traditional turquoise/peach pairing. Typical Florida –yawn —  it’s been done. But combine turquoise with a variety of its neighboring hues on the color wheel, from clearer blues to the yellow greens, like  tasty apple (Ben Moore #416),  and suddenly you have a more contemporary look. Add white to make the colors pop and you have a spectacular fresh new room.

So if you have old turquoise tiles from the early ’70s in your bathroom and you don’t want to gut the room, try painting the walls an icy version of the turquoise. Use plush white towels and some apple green soaps and other accents and you have an updated look.

Special Note: Unless you live in the tropics or the Southwest where turquoise occurs naturally in the environment, I suggest confining the color to the inside. If you really want to use turquoise outside, make it an accent color — like the front door on a light mint-green house. Or chairs on the deck. There’s no other color that screams vacation like turqouise.

Orange is a terrific color for stimulating creativity and enthusiasm. That’s why my office walls are orange. I find that paired with dark woods and lots of white, orange walls are like a sunrise in the morning and a sunset at night. And whereas red can be dark, orange is always bright and cheerful.  Blue-green is orange’s complementary color so the two make a very dramatic pair.  Turquoise, light blue, and green (all cool colors) balance the heat of the orange and look great as accessories.

For a really spectacular orange, try Sunset Boulevard (#082) by Benjamin Moore. Use it as a backsplash in a kitchen, an accent wall in a family room, or any place where you would like a splash of bright, sunny color.

The real key to painting your walls a bright, clear color value, as opposed to a grayed-down shade, is to use a lot of white, either in the trim or with furniture and accessories. White makes the color “pop” or stand out to the eye and also gives the eye a place to rest from all that terrific color.

If your own style dictates a more neutral wall color palette, try orange pillows on the sofa, a bowl of oranges on the kitchen table, and of course, orange flowers in a vase. I add orange to my neutral living room every summer. It perks me up. Try it.

Yellow is a great color if you like sunshine — and who doesn’t. The problem with yellow is that if you end up with a hue that is too lemony, it can really make the energy in the room a bit too intense. Even agitated. But if you select a hue that has a touch of red in it, you get a wonderful golden glow.

If you have a Benjamin Moore fan deck (or you’re headed to the paint store) check out the difference between sun city (352) and traditional yellow (170). The effect on a room is huge. Although the lemon yellow looks great on the paint chip, picture your whole room in that color. Acrid comes to mind. On the other hand, the orangey lemon is warm and enveloping, like the glow from a candle. If you do decide to use a lemon on your walls, you can temper the color with lots of white and black.

From the sky to the ocean to a baby’s blanket, it’s no wonder that everybody loves the color blue. As a cool color, blue recedes making rooms appear larger. As a color pulled from nature, blue represents relaxation and peace and is perfect for rooms like bedrooms, babies’ rooms, living rooms, porches, guest baths, and just about every other room where you want to relax. But choosing the right blue can be a real challenge because what appears to be a pretty blue in the paint store may turn out to be a vibrating horror on your walls.

Here’s an exercise. Next time you’re in the paint store, pull a bright clear blue (like Highland Breeze #786 from Benjamin Moore) from the sample rack and put it on a piece of white paper. Then pull what might appear to be gray (like Silvery Blue #1647 from Benjamin Moore) and put it on a different piece of white paper. Now stand back and try to picture what each of those colors will look like on all four walls of your room. What happens with the clear blue is that it feels like it’s vibrating. The clarity of the color makes it so intense in the room that the effect is far from restful, at least for an adult. (Kids and teenagers love clear colors so something like highland breeze might work for their rooms, but make sure you temper the color with a lot of white.)

The more restful shade of blue is the silvery blue because it is greyed down. It tends to blend and recede as a restful backdrop and is perfect for any bedroom.

The message to share is that you should notice more than the wall color when you enter a room. If all you see is the walls, then the room is not working. To avoid that wall color trap, look for greyed-down shades and avoid crystal clear hues that resemble the contents of a crayon box. You’ll be happier with the result.

Taupe is one of those colors that drive interior decorators crazy. It is fickle. One moment it is a wonderful neutral backdrop to rich woods, cream, and warm autumn colors. The next moment you’re seeing green. Then the next moment you’re seeing pink. Yikes!

All color is influenced and dependent upon light. From sunlight in the afternoon to incandescent bulbs at night to those awful fluorescents that we’re using more and more, the lighting in the room will change the color you actually see on your walls. That’s why the color you choose under the fluorescent lights in your paint store may not turn out to be the color you want in your home.

When you’re selecting color, the best thing to do is buy a little paint (companies are accommodating this practice by offering little pots of selected colors) and paint up a foam  core board. Then tape it to the wall in your room and observe the color at different times of the day. And on sunny and cloudy days. Is it the color you want?

This exercise is especially important with taupe. Moving out of the gray tones of taupe and into a warm camel brown (like C2 Paints’ Chai) might solve the chameleon color dilemma in your neutral room.

As a decorator, paint color in my house changes so often that my husband and kids just roll their eyes when they open the door and smell the fumes. They hardly notice any more. But I sure do. I change room color to experiment with light and shadow and depth of color as well as different color combinations and color placement. So wouldn’t you know that two days before my mother-in-law was to arrive, I decided to repaint our master bedroom. Deadlines seem to inspire me.

My jumping-off point was the area rug, a mixture of greens and salmon pinks. I had lived with a light shell pink on the walls for quite awhile and was ready for something richer. So I selected a beautiful soft green, not too olivey and not too sagey. Benjamin Moore’s High Park (#467 from their Classic Collection). It turned out to be a very relaxing color, perfect for a bedroom. And mixed with white and cream, the color “pops” (as we too often say).

The upholstered headboard (see other blog entry) was another last-minute inspiration as were the large pillows.

If you’re looking for a soothing, relaxing, ahhhhhh kind of bedroom, consider a soft green. Other favorites are Benjamin Moore’s historical greens like Kennebunkport Green (HC-123) and Nantucket Gray (HC-111). Both work really well in a bedroom and look spectacular with wood. And if you look at nature through your windows, you’ll feel like you’re in a tree house.