Irwin Weiner ASID - Color is a gut-level, highly personal experience. I recommended "green" for a client's room, and saw his face turn into a contorted mask. "No way!" he said. "Anything green reminds me of hospital walls." One person's calm, energizing, positive color experience will mean disaster and horrors to another. When decorating, please yourself and choose colors you can live with day in, day out. But don't feel you have to stick with what's on the walls or in your furnishings. Some tips:
Seasonal changes: Decorate with two color palettes a year - a spring/summer and a fall/winter scheme. Choose colors for furniture slipcovers, pillows, lampshades, and area rugs that give a lighter warm-weather feel and a darker, comfier cold-weather feel. It's good to shift the color palette and mood in your home.
Wall impact: It's an old chestnut, but it's true that paint is the quickest way to decorate. You'll get huge impact if you paint your walls with color, color, color. I'm not a huge fan of accent walls, however. They tend to shrink the room and remind me of amateur room makeover shows on TV. Here's a lengthier blog post I wrote on Adding Color to Your Walls. Enjoy!
Ceilings, too: I hate white ceilings in rooms with low ceilings and brightly painted walls (like putting a Tupperware lid on the room); paint walls and ceilings a unified color for bigger impact. Go a few shades lighter for the ceiling versus the wall color, but keep it unified and you'll be happier with the end results, I promise you.
Love of color: There are blogs and other websites devoted to specific colors! If you're a fan of black and white, for instance, then go to Black and White Delight for inspiration! House of Turquoise may be your best bet if you're a fan of turquoise and all shades of blue. Go to the Decor by Color site, and you can select colors that suit your taste - or explore colors you may be timid about - in blogs and stores devoted to inspiring interior design based solely on color. This is a great way to get decorating ideas.
Enjoy this video of talented designer Karim Rashid talking about color - he's a huge fan of pink! - from TheHome.com.
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