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| Courtesy
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Wine
room: The “before” of this room was a space stuffed
with antiques, a dark chest of drawers and a low, green
hide-a-bed. The bulky items were replaced with the club
sofa in deep merlot leather. The two marble tables,
of different size and shape but both featuring a harp-style
base, share the room with a pie crust table and a rose
needlepoint chair that had belonged to the homeowner’s
grandmother. An area rug the homeowner had purchased
for another room (where she found it did not work after
all) pulled it all together and helped to determine
the main wall color in the room.
(Click picture for full size image) |
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| Courtesy
photo |
| (Click
picture for full size image) |
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Enhance-what-you-have
design
by
RaeAnne Marsh
Standard
move-in paint plan: Get the walls painted before the furniture
arrives to get in the way.
This
may not be the best way to do your room’s colors, according
to Deborah Goodacre, owner of Divine Redesign (www.divineredesign.com).
Building the home’s wardrobe, as she puts it, starts with
the furniture, not the walls. “It’s just like putting on
your clothes,” said Goodacre. “You start with the biggest
and most basic items.”
In
the living room or great room, those will be the sofa, love
seat and chairs. Those pieces will define the style of the
room: contemporary, traditional or retro, for example. Once
the seating is set, it’s time to bring in the tables and
lamps. Add other lighting. Then, with the main stage set,
you can choose the colors with which to accent, and bring
them in with throw pillows, artwork and an area rug.
Lastly,
choose the wall color and the window treatments. “You can’t
pick these until you know the colors and textures in the
room,” said Goodacre, explaining further that textures play
into the color question because different textures reflect
light differently.
“You
want to pick the color off the floor and raise it. That’s
what moves the eye around the room,” Goodacre noted. It’s
that attention to eye movement that lies behind her advice
to be careful of painting an accent wall in a stand-out
color. “It can chop up the room”–especially in a smaller
room.
Even
in a large room, however, stark contrast may not be necessary
for strong impact. “For one client, I painted one wall
of the bedroom a shade deeper than the other walls. And
I repeated that design in the attached master bathroom,
painting the wall behind the bathtub the deeper shade.
The client loved it,” Goodacre related.
“Walls
should support what’s sitting on the floor,” said Goodacre,
conjuring up a rather curious alternate reality, architecturally
speaking. But it’s an important concept in design terms.
And a single-tone color scheme is not as effective as
contrast. In fact, Goodacre related the vision of one
room in which the walls and baseboards had been painted
to match the deep green color of the sofa. “The sofa faded
into the walls.” Some contrasting throw pillows and walls
that picked up a rich brown earth tone in the pillows
made it a more inviting and dynamic room.
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This
concept applies to woods as well. “You need some things the same
or else it will look hodge-podge, but if everything is from the
same suite, it will look boring.” Her only caveat: “Don’t go from
really dark to really light.”
“People
have already bought things that appeal to them, then they get
them in their home and try to find a place for them,” Goodacre
observed. Unusual pieces, often bought on a whim or inherited
and, therefore, rife with sentimental value, need not be apologetically
hidden in an out-of-the-way corner of the home. Neither should
they necessarily be arranged the way they were in your mother’s
house.
One
homeowner, transplanted from Atlanta, Ga., brought to her Arizona
abode several pieces that had belonged to her mother and were
very important to her. But they looked lost in their new home,
with its high ceilings and sunlight-bathed airiness. She had arranged
three petite chairs around one dominating couch, with the one
other large piece—a glass-fronted secretary—placed against a side
wall. The small rug on the expanse of white tile floor looked
like a postage stamp. The effect was to emphasize the spindly
look of the chairs and create a room with no inviting conversation
area. The secretary, the real focal point of the room, was hidden
on the side wall where you didn’t really see it until you were
in the center of the room. Even a pair of matching lamps could
not overcome the imbalance of the room.
Moving
the beautiful secretary to the wall by the couch put it where
you would see it as you approached the room. Bringing in the curio
cabinet from the family room–where it had been out of place, anyway,
as it was too formal for that more relaxed room–balanced the living
room. The family room also yielded a pair of large, cushioned
chairs and a larger rug. Placing the chairs to face the couch
created a balanced conversation area grounded by the rug. The
look of the family room was, simultaneously, improved, as the
larger rug had been too large there. Into the glassed cabinet
have been placed all the special family curios, so instead of
looking cluttered in scattered display, they look important in
a place where they can be enjoyed. A simple, golden, etched-glass
chandelier was purchased to hang above the coffee table. The petite
chairs have been relocated to other rooms in the house, where
they serve well as accent chairs.
Finally,
drapery panels were hung on the window and the walls were painted
a cream color that was picked up from the rug. This gives soft
support to the other colors in the room, notably the vibrant red
of the couch, without competing with them.
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