Soft Cozy & Warm Pastel Color Palette

Last month’s House Beautiful featured this warm and toasty room on last month’s cover. I immediately fell for the soft mix of colors. Brown with pink and blue has been around awhile, but the pastels seem fresh – more new. It also proves that you can use pink in a living room. Read More…

Interior Design Inspiration: Pink & Gray

With a nod to the 1980′s pink and gray as an interior color palette is making a return to popularity. In the ’80′s, this combination was more of a mauve with gray. Now, the gray is warm and the pinks are either soft pastels, or vibrant fuchsia.

Here are a few rooms to inspire you.

Gray is the grounding color. Pink is the accent. The touch of gold is also important. Notice the matte paint on all the trim as well as the walls. The matte finish is perfect with the unfinished, matte floor.

This is a photo from the new restaurant in the Parisian Hotel Vendome. Grays and pinks mix with the boldness of the black and white houndstooth – the print-of-the-moment.

I love the mix of textures here. The gray wallpaper with the floor is nice.

This is a warmer look. The warm gray, matte again, is relaxing. And the rosy pink gives an inviting burst of color.

I like the painting hung by the bath here. Love the chair as well.

Matte gray with fuchsia is lovely. But you know, it looks like the stylist covered the cushion on the settee with that fabric. I think the bed skirt is new as well. You can see the creases – fresh out of the package. No matter. The point is the color combination – and it looks great.

These flowers are really a fuchsia. But on my screen they look more like purple. At any rate, the statement is clear – gray as a grounding color with pinks as accents makes for a lovely room.

If you’d like to try this color combination at home, I suggest using Benjamin Moore’s Gray Shower and Shadow Gray for gray (obviously). Pink Pansy is nice and soft. Crushed Berries is my Fuchsia choice.

Time to vote! Which look is your favorite?

images: Ricardo Labougle, Nicolas Matthias, Anna Trench

How Aged Paint Can Save You A Bundle

Who would think of the wonderful mix of Kelly green with deep Indigo? A clever person with a great eye for color. (No, it wasn’t me.)

More importantly, the aged patina is truly brilliant. It adds a third color, which adds more depth to the room as a whole. But it also makes the obvious age of the shelves seem appropriate. These shelves are aged, but not neglected.

Imagine them painted with a solid color and those warped shelves would be screaming, “Fix me!” The next time you think something in your home must be torn out, or thrown away, think again. Maybe all it really needs is an interesting paint job.

Balance: Benjamin Moore’s Color Forecast for 2011

Will we return to hearth and home and while we seek order in our lives? Will we dream secret dreams? Will community life become the focus of our lives? Benjamin Moore thinks so. They presented these ideas at Wednesday’s Color Pulse for 2012. Their forecast is directed at Designers and Architects. But I thought everyone would be interested in reading about their thoughts.

Their overall theme was Balance, translated into four distinctive influencers: Farm, Order, Escape and Tribes. Benjamin Moore’s forecaster, Andrea Magno painted the picture for us.

Farmville

No doubt, last year’s economic crisis has affected all of us. While not stating this overtly, the link is obvious. Benjamin Moore believes our fears will translate into greater importance being placed on hearth and home with both at least one foot planted firmly in reality.

Earthy browns form the backdrop for milky whites and pale, buttery yellows. Hay and terra cotta mix with “varietals” such as aubergine, pumpkin, tomato and, of course, green. Tints are baked in the warm sunshine.

Beyond pure color, life on the farm includes fabrics suggesting the handmade. We‚Äôll see macram?©, irregular knits, and burlap. Tea-stained effects, tie-dyes and hand-stenciled patterns all suggest a desire to appreciate the simple things in life. Luxury is out.

Order

From the chaos of last year, comes a desire for a sense of order. Benjamin Moore interprets this as a return to basic primary colors applied to a monochromatic scale of blacks, grays and whites. That means lots of red with black. Blue, yellow, green – even pink are paired with grays. No more neon.

Patterns are geometric. Rectilinear shapes, circles and triangles are stacked and molded into larger shapes. Clean lines are the order of the day.

Escape comes after the jump.

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Design Dilemma: A Vibrant, Contemporary Living Room

I love it when clients pull together things that inspire them, like the board shown above. It gives me a starting point for design. And, anyone who loves a Charles Sofa is my kind of person. Those are two reasons why I was delighted to hear from Georgia B., who aspires to owning the real thing one day. In the meantime, she has settled for a less expensive “Charles” inspired by the original. It sits in her newly constructed Florida home. A sofa is always a good place to start designing a new home. Georgia asked me to take over and help with the rest.  Read More…