I’m messing around with colors a lot lately. I’m having a lot of fun with a book called Choosing Colors by Kevin McCloud: 64 sets of palettes, with example photos, and lists of actual paint colors, mostly Benjamin Moore.
I went through a bohemian decorating phase involving very bright colors on the walls, but they make my Beloved nervous, so I’m trying to tone down this time around. I’m trying to take existing stuff into account, like my red/orange/yellow/black paisley almost eight foot long sofa. So the living room, instead of being exhaustingly bright yellow with red and black furniture, is going to get palette 48, “archaeological colors”. It consists of five colors, which the author describes as “dusty red”, “deep green-gray, almost black”, “chalky off-white”, delicate pale cobalt blue”, and “intense golden yellow”. The yellow and red are already there, in the sofa. The blue (the least intense of the colors, besides the white) is going on the walls. I’ve got two barrel chairs upholstered in black. We’ll see what happens.
I chose the tile for the new bathroom before I settled on the palette, but choosing the color for the countertop forced me into it. I’m getting laminate, and I feel pretty strongly that something that looks like real Formica is better than fake Formica stone or fake Formica wood, so I got a dark grey, just solid color. The palette for the bathroom will be number 38, “water and air”. The colors: “delicate and subtle blue” (probably won’t use that), “duck egg” (a blue-green), “brown” (originally I thought this would be the countertop, but that’s where I ran into Formica trying to masquerade as something it’s not), “robust and slightly dirty greenish cream” (the walls), “exquisite sage green” (the tiles), and “delicate green, very 1920s in feel” (maybe trim?). Mostly blues and greens, but with a brownish/grayish cast, rather than bright Mediterranean blue/greens. Anyway, they’re all very subtle colors, so my Beloved should remain unalarmed.
Playing with color is fun. Just the names of these palettes are fun: “the importance of brown and cream”, “brown and blue in a hot climate”, “the lost colors of the kalahari”.
Glad you’re taking the sofa into account ;-)
What a fun endeavor. I admire your je ne sais quoi about color. These days, my palette tends to run to cream, vanilla, off-white, and — for excitement — maybe a little magnolia. Drives the floor guy nuts!
Heh, gotta keep those ‘nervous beloved ones’, they can charge at any time when startled!
In order to keep my Beloved un-nervous, I’m greatly expanding the definition of “off-white”. “What color will the bathroom walls be? Sort of a greenish off-white, honey.”