Category Archives: Color Trends

Stepping out on Ben: A Date with Farrow & Ball

Posted in Color Trends, Uncategorized by
Farrow & Ball . Marbled marvelousness

When I was 12 years old I worked as a pot washer. Not a very glamourous sounding job, but I took pride in it. I learned things like the optimal number of pots you could wash before having to drain the large stainless steel sink of the roughly twenty gallons of dirty, now lifeless suds and await their slow dissent down the drain. Getting it just right was critical to avoiding repeating this process too many times. The extra time I gained allowed me the luxury of watching the Chef and Sous Chef prep the beef, tying it into its lattice cage of string in preparation for roasting. I loved watching the vegetables being julienned, the sauces being whipped into creamy concoctions, and discovered that it wasn’t only baked goods that required an understanding of chemistry, any good dish blends fats and acids, layers aromatics, herbs, and spices creating complex cuisine.

Liberty of London Wallcoverings Paired with F & B.

If you’re wondering what pot washing has to do with paint, it’s the chemistry. Color is pretty complex, even if it’s the pretty part that I’m mostly interested in and attracted to. I’ve been a long-time loyal supporter of Benjamin Moore. Its easy application, brilliant colors, eco friendly Aura had me going steady for years. Best paint for the money I’ve said again and again and believe it. It isn’t going to stop me from trying F & B.

KW . Your allure never fades.

Farrow was a chemist, Ball a prisoner of war, they met in a clay pit. Fascinating as that all is, it’s the quirky named colors that seem to hold an ancient wisdom within their powdery atoms that has caught my attention. A little muddy, a little mysterious, sophisticated where my Ben is an easy going happy sort. They can be moody and a bit chalky even when they are attempting to be upbeat. The California Collection by none other than Kelly Wearstler is more hazy smog than sun soaked, but that hasn’t stopped me from falling for No. CC6 a blue/gray and considering it for my next project.

Oval Room Blue
California Collection: Hazy

I think I’ll gathering together a few sample pots and get splashy with it.

On Point . AKDO x Jill Rosenwald . Fort Point Collection

Posted in Color Trends, Uncategorized by
A Twist on an old classic. 5 x 5’s shown in Harbor and Salty with an undulating surface that shines.

When it comes to the tried and true lovers of blue, Mark Sikes and Summer on the Coast seem to love these hues the most. As the days get warmer my excitement for the sand, sea, light linens, and fresh cut flowers outpace our New England weather. No worries, as the temperature bounces around like the metal ball in a pin ball machine I’ll be planning my next summer home renovation for a home I don’t yet own, in a place I am not entirely exists, with a fervor that defies all reason. It will be fueled by Jill Rosenwald’s new line of tiles entitled, Fort Point – the name of the section of the city in which her eponymous pottery shop resides, and from whence her inspiration is derived.

Flora in the making.

In partnership with AKDO, a NYC dealer of luxury tile and stone, Jill created a small but mighty line of tiles that are both an ode to our revolutionary ways, our coastal location, our love of tea and hatred of taxes. I for one often feel that I have a little revolt in me, adore tea, am calmed by the sea and salt water, and hate taxes as much as the next hot blooded American, so would feel a kinship with the tile even if I were blind, which I am not. They are gorgeous.

Sublime elegance in the elongated subway tile. You can never go wrong with this selection.

Five colors, two patterns, two sizes, endless inspiration. Hello Sailor, you had me at navy blue stripes. Is there anything that is more quintessentially nautical than that. Don’t answer, or do, I won’t hear you argue with me. It’s the number one, number one, plus it’s very French, which makes me adore it even more. Brushy and Flora the two patterns are simple yet inspired. The color palette which includes Hello Sailor, Tea Party, Harbor, Salty and Wharf is serene and cheerful. Whether you are rinsing off in a cool shower after a hot, sandy day at the beach or prepping chilled margarita’s and a mint, feta and watermelon salad in your sublimely tiled kitchen, this tile will offer you a safe harbor.

Refined meets easy breezy.

I think I will go in search of a wallcovering to place in a nook inside my imaginary pantry for good measure. Aren’t you just begging for an invitation?

Hello Sailor in 5 x 5 and Brushy.

Spring Has Sprung

Posted in Color Trends by

Except here in New England where spring is more likely to still be caught in a long winter’s nap, and be skipped over entirely for summer. My fever for the season has not diminished an ounce despite my regions unwillingness to embrace renewal.

Ah renewal, an opportunity to dust off the doldrums and bunnies that have surely collected in the darker corners of your house and give it a proper cleaning. Root around in the shed or the storage closet to see what potting soil remains to plant a happy row of tulips or daffodils, a perfect urn placed at your front door, punctuated by pussy willows, and a trail of ivy. Polish up your bike, grease up the chain and launch off for a ride to the beach or farmer’s market and fill your basket with honey.

I like to give my decore a refresh while I am at it and Spring always makes me long for a coastal cottage to call my own. Perhaps that dream will have to remain a little further down my dirt path than I would like as I am currently without a primary home, and while I am not homeless, my restlessness for a renovation project feels like it’s reaching a feverish pitch, which no amount of house hunting has yet sated. Touch market. I got a punch in the gut when I saw that the only property I placed an offer on since the start of the year went for $100K over ask. It’s a one bedroom. Instead of a fresh start, I feel like I’m back to square one.

Fortunately I possess a vivid imagination and am happily putting it to use designing a home of my imaginings that would make the Equinox come-a-knocking for cocktails.

Color Me Happy

Posted in Color Trends by
Mood Boosting Yellows by Ben Moore

I get a rosy glow when I do something that makes me money. While green isn’t ever going to be one of my go-to hues for home, my affection for it is inextricably tied to its universal associations with luck and wealth, with nature and sustainability, with spring and the circle of life. Green will always have a place in my heart where regrettably one of my less favorable qualities – envy lives. I hope that with a large amount of awareness and a Birch Stick I am able to beat it back, making way for the dewy rose bud hue of possibility that sits on the precipice of a new day. Ah color.

Pratt & Lambert . Rose Quartz

It’s big business. At $30B in US sales annually, you can bet they don’t just let anyone name the colors, which naturally got me thinking about who does get to name them. Color Theorists/Specialists, Psychologists, and Marketing Professionals with a Lawyer or two thrown in to derail your plans, least you think you’ve got an original when you don’t, can all play a role in the naming process. The process by the way isn’t all flapjacks and silly putty – though the names might incidentally or accidentally make their way into the collection, it’s far more scientific than that.

BM . Salamander . @Lindsay_Salazar_Photography

Color naming falls into four basic categories: Geographical, Experiential, Emotional and Visual. Geographical names are pretty obvious. They evoke the feeling of a place and might be named; Sand Dune, Parisienne Cafe, Turkish Delight, or Ocean Meets Sky. My choice for experiential colors, because if I didn’t make it clear, I’d like to be a Color Marketing Manager that spent more than 10% of my time naming colors would be Cliff Walk, Tango in the Dust, Deep Dive, Runway or Sun Salutation. Emotional can be felt in the names; Bashful, Buttery Bliss, Cruel Crimson, or Naughty Noir. Visual Colors are meant to evoke a thing rather than a place, and bring the hue to mind like Cotton Candy, a pale spun sugary pink or Coffee Bean a rich dark chocolate brown, or Marilyn’s Dress, named by Monroe herself for a color that reminded her of a dress she owned when she was a child that made her happy. Apparently working at Ben Moore did not illicit the same feelings.

Parisian Cafe . Je prend un cafe s’il vous plait.

As for my color naming career, I am not sure I’d pass the mustard – not a tone you are likely to see me choose, and interestingly very similar to Farrow & Balls Color of the Year – Babouche, which I like for the way it rolls off my tongue and the association with the Moroccan slippers that the men of this country famously wear. Naming has to do double or triple duty. It must win you over in the war between brands that have similar shades. It needs to inspire and forge an emotional connection, and it needs to be true its descriptor. While we adore incongruity in writing, we seek harmony in our homes.

’22 and the Moody Hues

Posted in Color Trends, Uncategorized by
Browns, creams and saturated tints will rule the year.

They are stories in silk, woven with the wondrous, and fantastical, the realistic, and the magical. Of the moment, of the mythical, of the mountain majesties, the desert plains, the soundless ocean floors, and royal castle doors. They are imagination gone wild, splicing worlds together, blending and blurring and ever obscuring boundaries. The thinnest of barriers sit between night and day, childhood and adulthood, between East and West. It’s a cacophony of carefully curated chaos, so artistically and intricately executed that to be lost in it, is to find yourself enchanted.

Layer color and texture to create a sensory experience.

For those that track color trends, they offer the fullest expression of the hues of twenty-two, with their moody blues, and saturated shades. There are earthy tones, warm creamy neutrals, and muddy greens, browns, and roses. They hint at depth and texture, and detail, all of which will play starring roles in the new year. While they are unadorned, the images they depict are anything but. There are flowers and feathers and fringe and finery. The “more” of the maximalist methodology that will dominate the year. There will be layers of texture and pattern that don’t even try to hide their playful abandon.

Marry the muddy and moody with a the fantastical. Nature will find its way into homes in a big way.

Embrace the contradictions in action. Like the eponymous brand, Hermes was a thief and an athlete, a soul guide and a shepherd. The God of boundaries, music and speed, wit and sleep. He was a protector of travelers, and a source of good luck. His winged feet are emblematic of his role as messenger, which seems fitting for a year that is likely to be filled with Yes-No directives.

Whimsy won’t be outdone, so don’t be afraid to have a little fun. Hermes Tea Time Scarf.

Get lost in the details. Confusion, such as it is, is just another way of letting you know that you can never be wrong for long. Let the experimentation begin.

Color is a Fickle Friend: Choosing Paint

Posted in Color Trends, Uncategorized by

Beige peeked out between the stacked corrugated cardboard moving boxes, penned in red Sharpie. The dim light of a dreary rainy day contributing to the institutional look of the rental unit. The exposed concrete deck, with its polished finish finding favor with the glossy grey cabinetry in the kitchen, completed the totality of color. Neutral, bland, basic.

Troy . The Neutral Zone

While I am sure there are plenty of people that would move right into their rental unit and leave it just that way, adding a splashy pillow or throw to bring a pinched cheek of color to the pallor, I am not them. My feelings surrounding my departure from No. 5 matched the unexceptional setting that I was entering, which wouldn’t do at all. New beginnings should be approached with excitement, anticipation, or at the very least a prickle of uncertainty about what the future will hold. Yes, I wanted that, and though the market has been decidedly bereft of interesting offerings, I was going to plan, as if a property was right around the corner, the tale of which was just waiting to be whispered to me, or posted at an unusual hour – standing by, for me to pounce, and pounce I would with a color palette preplanned, and prepared for painting!

Soft Jazz
Soft Jazz
Brilliant Blue – which is what it actually looked like on the walls in the unit.

Poor, many pennies less in my purse, me – I had my sample blotched living room wall painted on the Monday after my Wednesday arrival, only to arrive home that evening and decide with a decisiveness that removes any question that there was ever doubt, that “Soft Jazz” would was not going to be a headliner in my club. I hated it. To say that the pictures didn’t tell the tale of the tastelessness of the tint, is an understatement. Picture an 18 year old boys dorm room blue. Image the aroma of sweat, unwashed sheets, and days old pizza fossilizing in cheap cardboard flats on the floor. That’s the color blue that I had splashed on my walls, and it had to go.

Blue Heather
Blue Heather Sample . Which is why you have to test it on the wall, and make that test area as big as you can.

More samples, more hand wringing, another late night return to the home two days later, one eye closed in anticipation of a second costly failure. No, I nailed it. I think Heather Blue is going to be the color of 2022. Thank you Ben Moore for delivering a Christmas miracle.

Opposites Attract: the use of black and white in design

Posted in Architecture, Color Trends, Uncategorized by
Ken Fulk’s Living Room Design . Anchored in Black and White.

Balance in life is something we are ever in pursuit of. One side of the seesaw is tipped too far, and too long, on the side of drama, chaos, endless checklists that can feel as if they add up to nothing of significance, even when the boxes display that emphatic red slash or definitive x. Then it bumps gently down on the side of calm composure, perhaps brought on by a vacation that you never want to leave.

Forward and Backward: Left Julia Robb Kitchen Design . Right: Jean Louis Deniot

We need both, we need equilibrium, we need that special mental calmness, composure, and even temper when we are faced with the most vexing situations. You know the kind, the ones a design and construction project are always throwing your way. I can hear the yogi Baron Baptiste whispering in his flat affect…”equanimity”, the even tide of his utterance lulling me into a hypnotic state. No time for that now. We must discuss contrast.

Kelly Wearstler’s San Francisco . The Proper Hotel

Contrast – the good and evil, the dark and the light, the total absorption of one, ironically brings about expansiveness. Paint your walls black or install kitchen cabinets of the same color and they seem to recede into the distance making your 100sf feel like two or three. White wash your walls and get ready to reflect the sunlight that pours in through your windows, tricking you once again into thinking the space is larger than it is.

Suzanne Kasler . Just a touch of black inside the fireplace to ground the white room.

Black and white is timeless and chic. It can draw your attention to the one color or object in a room that you want the visitor to appreciate most. It goes with any color combination or design style, making it the single most versatile combo you can choose to use. You never need to be afraid of the dark if you don’t forget to leave the white on.

Paintings: The only palette you’ll ever need

Posted in artwork, Color Trends by

They are so brilliantly expressive, marrying hues that seemingly don’t go together, in a way that is at once natural, and entirely logical. If painting were only based in the world of reality, for which I am ever so grateful, it is not. Frankly I don’t know where I would be without a pink hippopotamus, a blue tree, and a violet sky – well sometimes the sky is violet, but it’s very rare, you have to admit. The beauty of uncommon pairings is itself an artform, and I find it incredibly comforting to know that even if I appear to have made a terrible misjudgment with the colors I selected for one of my flips, I can flip that script with a painting, that makes it alright again.

Just see how many colors you can squeeze out of a single painting. Your furniture will pick it right up.

While I understand not everyone buys, renovates, sells, buys, renovates, sells, buys, renovates, sells – well you get the point, it can be exhausting and exhilarating, and leave you, loyal reader, with the incorrect impression that after a while, I surely get it right. Oh, how I wish that were true, but I often get it wrong. This may lead you to ask yourself, why ever would you listen to a word I have to say, if I am not perfect, not always right, so often get things wrong? I understand your hesitancy, but lean in here while I tell you this secret. Have you leaned in? None of us, not even the people you revere the very most, are perfect. They make mistakes too. It’s called being human. Life is so much softer when you understand and accept that.

A favorite Texas Artist of Mine . a happy mess of colors.

Let’s just assume for the sake of this post that you are pretty perfect, but someone, say your grandmother or aunt, or brother, or old college roommate gave you a sofa or a rug, for instance, and you are not at all like me. YOU ARE sentimental. The not at all like me part comes in here because I am not sentimental at all. I would give that sofa away, leave that rug in my childhood friend’s home, never to return to collect it. I wouldn’t bat and eye or shed a tear, but as I said – in this story, you are not me. You are terribly sentimental, so play that part please. How could you just sell that gifted carpet, that beloved sofa, where so many lovely memories were made? You couldn’t, you wouldn’t even if you were beginning to resent the gift and all of its design havoc wrecking qualities. You had a nearly perfect (really – was it? Be honest) home, until that gift horse arrived in your house.

Even an old master can be made new again with color.

If it’s old and weathered and all your other pieces are new, if it’s a violent blood read, and your were going for serenity in the form of pale grays, embrace the change. Art will make it feel intentional.

Add a black accent and watch it pop.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Posted in Architecture, Color Trends by
The Academy Hotel . London

I had a great uncle that was rather famous in literary circles. A Jesuit Priest at Boston College, Father Francis Sweeney was most notably renowned for starting the Humanities Series there, and for corresponding with, and bringing literary masters to BC. Jack Kerouac, Katherine Anne Porter, Robert Penn Warren, and Thomas Merton – the revered Trappist Monk and author of The Seven Storey Mountain, a spiritual tome, were among those Uncle Francis brought to the college, and helped to promote. My mother was photographed along side Robert Frost, and Father Francis, at one of the regular luncheon celebrations, that were part of his normal existence.

Chairish . Casa Cosima . Desk in Chrome Green.

Poetry, I would not say, is one of my favorite things, but whether it was the connection to Robert Frost, his ability to tether you to the landscape of a New England town, so much a part of my DNA that when my eyes scan the words, they set my cells tingling with sensory memory. I feel at once calm, and at home.

Birdcage Coffee Table – a little bit of sparkle in the space.

Nothing Gold Can Stay . Robert Frost – 1874-1963

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

My beloved Christopher Farr . Carnival

Such a beautiful poem – a departure of sorts from my normal posts, but in my defense I was thinking about gold accents and how important bringing the glint of metallics into a space is to our overall enjoyment. That little bit of sparkle that catches your eye. We are calmed by movement, its hypnotizing effects putting us into a temporary trance-like state, like watching the flickering of the flames alight in a fireplace, or the flutter of a curtain in the breeze, metals seem to invite light and reflection, creating curiosity, interest, an enticing invitation to take a closer look.

Rejuvenation Hardware . Macadam Brass Hurricane Lantern

I’m awfully fond of curiosities in a home. I welcome the questions that come from the objects – a gold guilted sunburst mirror, a nautically inspired hurricane lantern, a recent gift from a dear friend that knew I would adore it, the bee hive knobs that adorn my wardrobes, the brushed bird cage base of my coffee table, which I spotted, to my delight in The Good Fight sitcom, in Diane Lockhart’s living room.

Robert Frost might have been tickled pink to know that green is the new gold this season. Look for it in fashion and home design. Now that you know, I bet you’ll see it everywhere. After all, Nature’s first green is gold.

Be of Good Cheer: YELL-O – you’ll feel better

Posted in Color Trends by
1960’s Fiat Jolly – who wouldn’t be hooted with laughter as they tooled around town in that?

I don’t know about you, but all this being inside is making me cranky. I’m more a run around about town kind of gal. You know, the can’t sit still for very long kind, but not the kind that can’t be bothered to listen to you restless kind. I’ve been running up and down my stairs at regular intervals but it hasn’t been entirely effective at shaking the blues, so I thought it was time to bring in the yellow.

Hello Ivy! This retro style kitchen with its cheerful floral paper and sliding cabinet doors is lemony perfection.

Blue is my natural design state, but I have always admired the boldness of yellow. It’s a California blond, and I’m a New England brunette. It’s summertime and lemonade. It’s sand between your bare toes – it’s innocence – it’s the absurdity of a daffodil and the pure happiness of a daisy. It’s a bobbing balloon in a spring breeze. It’s the silly to my far too serious. No wonder I’m attracted to it.

Ah, Kelley Wearstler – you are my design crush. The Viceroy . Palm Springs.

While you won’t catch me wearing a yellow frock – it’s not my best color, and you’re not likely to find my next flip showcasing the sunny hue, I thought just for today, we could celebrate the fact that the color does have a peculiar way of making you smile.

Jay Jeffries designed bath. Good Morning sunshine.

Stay calm, and wash your hands.

Almost time for spring flower planting.