Your Home & Color Coach

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.