Don’t Be Afraid – It’s Just A Little Color!

Happy day, ReDo Readers! It’s starting to look like Spring, and I’m loving it – the sun, the warmth, the lack of snow and ice! HAHA! Seriously, Spring-like weather has such a healing effect on people; everyone seems a little happier, a little nicer, a little more patient, and there’s an overall sense of hope in the air as the days march forward into the new year. In one month, it’s officially spring, according to the Vernal, or Spring, Equinox. It’s this time of year that we celebrate the rebirth of life as the flowers begin to bloom and the birds start to sing and the world starts to shake off the dusty coat of Winter for something a little more colorful and a little more exciting. During this time many people take it upon themselves to tackle home projects like spring cleaning, or home improvement, since the days get longer, and the light gets stronger, and we can begin to see our household a little more clearly. So it’s an ideal time to freshen your home in a variety of ways, and one of the best is to add that exciting freshness is to add some color to your walls.

Just the other day I was having a “consult,” with a husband-and-wife pair of clients, regarding their cute mid-century home in a cozy neighborhood of St. Louis. They have beautiful furniture and accessories, and are very handy when it comes to tackling home improvement projects. But the thing they just couldn’t get, somehow, was finding a way to use color for the living room, one that would create a flow into the adjacent areas. They had already picked out an accent tone, but were stymied on what to do with it next. So I sat down with the clients and we talked all about color, and how you “market it” to your head and your emotions. Great ideas came out of that conversation, of how to use color to manipulate spaces in your home, and I’m here to share some of them with you, and see what else I can add to the list of ideas.

One of the biggest concerns people have over color is FEAR, usually of the unknown, or of an unclear outcome: afraid to try this color or that; afraid it’ll make the room feel too dark or too bright; afraid that the color won’t complement or will be awful; afraid it’s too much or not enough, and so on. The first thing I always tell my clients is this: “it’s just paint.” You can always do as little or as much as you want, and if you don’t like it, you can change, because it’s not permanent. Paint (like all decoration) is just the medium that helps us express our feelings, our likes and comforts, the things that soothe and calm us, feelings that we want to surround ourselves in as often as we can. It’s all in how you market it, in your head, to yourself. There are some colors I don’t like to use for walls when I decorate and design rooms, like blue. I find it’s a hard color to make warm, regardless of the furnishings and accessories you fill the space with. Harsh, dark colors, like deep reds or bright, or cheery colors like orange and yellow are hard to fit into some spaces, as they tend to overwhelm, and really don’t soothe the mind or soul. If anything, they act in an opposite manner, agitating and vibrating in strange and unusual ways. I always feel uncomfortable in rooms that are of these tones.

One way I market colors to myself, in my head, is by choosing comfortable “food related” descriptors: chocolate pudding brown instead of mud brown, or cafe latte tan instead of sand; sage green instead of gray green, and so on. This is what I mean by “marketing” change to your brain. It’s easier to buy into the associative concept of using food references for a “comfort area” for most everyone. Butter yellow instead of pale yellow; tomato soup red instead of a reddish-orange or terra cotta color; milkshake brown instead of earth brown. Food is sustenance, so using ‘foody’ words helps to understand HOW the color will relate to you personally, and how you can find comfort in using it. And though I don’t mind using ‘earth’ tone descriptors either (rust, grass, wood, teak, bamboo, slate, etc.) I find food is easier to understand and embrace.

So this client has a living room where three of the walls are painted a mid-tone tan (one might even say, a milky latte tone). And the end wall, or ‘accent’ wall, is a beautiful rich cocoa brown (do you see how that works? It’s great!), a color which they are understandably gaga over. But the problem that this client faced was in finding what to do with the cocoa brown color once it was on the wall – they felt the room needed something more, to go with the cranberry red accents (possibly curtains, pillows, or other accessories). But they were afraid to elevate the cocoa brown “color status” to the MAIN color, instead of an accent tone. Considering their beautiful dark tanned leather couch and chair combination, with their low backs and track style arms, the couple was not comfortable with having that much more brown, AND on a wood floor that was already a rich and rustic walnut color.

What I told my client was this: with the accessories in the space, the main pop of color is coming from the vibrant cranberry red, accented by brushed silver tones. THIS is what catches the eye first. Knowing that, you should have no problem stretching the accent wall color to an adjacent wall, filling the room with more of the cocoa brown warmth. Dismiss the fear of ‘too much brown’ and just try it, see how that makes you feel once it’s been taken to one more wall. And when you’re done, you might decide you like it enough to take it to a third wall, or even all the walls. It’s not too dark to consume the area, but with proper accessories and lighting, you can make this accent color actually fade away, so that all you notice is the furniture and accessories. The mind will now see the accent as a neutral, and the worry and concern over too much of it becomes moot.

When you’re anxious about using strong color, the great thing about painting one wall at a time is that you can control just how much to use, and how far you want to push the emotional feeling you get from it. You can play in your comfort zone to your heart’s content but you can also gradually expand the zone, one wall at a time. It’s really that easy. If this kind of fear is of nothing more than the unknown, then what do you have to lose by trying? Maybe some sweat equity, but that’s all, really. And I’m a firm believer in “nothing ventured, nothing gained.” When I painted a small kitchenette in my house, I was determined to use this amazing shade of green I saw in a magazine: rich, lush, warm, ‘foody’ – all the descriptors I needed to hear. So, I bought a gallon and got to painting. And you know what? When all was said and done, I thought I was going to throw up. The green I saw before, and in my mind, was NOTHING like the green I saw in the magazine. On my walls it was hideous, ‘sweet’, cold and unappealing, all at once. And it clashed with the new wood cabinets! I was feeling pretty bad about my decision and, if I hadn’t been through this sort of thing before, I’d also be questioning my abilities. But, knowing that “it’s just paint,” and I can change it, you can bet that’s exactly what I did. I found the shade of green that really worked, and made the space seem warm, inviting, rich in tone with a feeling that I could live with this color for a long time.

It’s OK to make mistakes – choosing the wrong shade, or a color that’s not quite right, or a tone that just doesn’t feel like you can live with it in your home. That’s totally cool, and I hope that you actually DO that so that you experience what I’m trying to share with you, and don’t be afraid! You can’t go wrong, because in the end, you will eventually get it exactly right! This is what finding your stride is all about – you have to make a few mistakes so that you find the feeling you’re really looking for. The journey is half the fun!

Now go out there and make the most of your home improvement projects; I hope you have some painting on your to-do list… see you soon!