September 2, 2008

DESIGN DAILY: Finally, The Paint Palette

Choosing paint is the first step in laying the foundation of home decoration—a basic concept but agonizing to execute. As you may remember from a previous blog, I wanted to take the tangerine color from an Antonia Hutt dining room design and paint my kitchen with it. It was so dramatic and delicious but a few sample pots and hundreds of paint chips later, we realized it would have been completely wrong for our apartment. The layout of our brownstone is a wide railroad style; we have wonderful natural light entering our bedrooms and our living room but our kitchen is at the center of the window sandwich. This makes it the darkest and most central room in the house and maybe not the ideal place to have my fiery color moment. The kitchen had to be inviting, livable, and most of all complement to the adjacent living room. So after some prodding, I decided to stop having my fling with the color of the moment and go back to the colors I know and love.

If there is one color that dominates my wardrobe or one shade that draws me to a boutique shelf, it’s a silvery green. My strawberry-blonde mother is the same way and with her decorating background she knew exactly what paint color that translated to: Restoration Hardware’s Silver Sage. She has always said Restoration Hardware doesn’t have a lot of colors to choose from but whatever thye have is good. Mike and I went to their store and chose this cool beautiful gray green for the living room and a very light yellow called Butter Cream for the kitchen and connecting hallway. With pure white trim, the palette is soft, inviting, and perfect for the hub of the house.

So when it came to painting the bathroom, I had to shake things up. It was an impulse decision half way through the day but I took one look at my neutral hub and I went to the hardware store and bought the deepest, richest plum purple I could find. We painted the ceiling all the way down to the white chair rail. The dark color overhead broken up a white chair rail and a latte brown below gives this small bath real drama--it’s just the mini-color rebellion I was looking for.

The bedroom colors were taken from my two favorite wallpapers. They are still rolled up in a box so when they go up, we’ll talk pattern and palette.