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| This is the living room in a
Tudor-revival house. Despite the ample windows, the room was cold
and dark feeling. The previous owners had attempted to deal with
this by painting the walls a pale yellow and everything else, including
the limestone fireplace, stark white. It did not work - in fact, the
results were just the opposite. The room felt colder and just sort
of grey and depressing. |
Counter-intuitively, it
sometimes is better to go darker in order to make a space feel
brighter. We kept the woodwork white, but softened a bit. The
big difference is the wall color - a rich, warm, lush terra cotta, with
plenty of complementary colors. The result, as you can see,
sparkles, and the light that does come in seems brighter by contrast.
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| In order to keep the rich wall
color from feeling too dark, I introduced elements that were clearly much
darker, like the light fixtures, some dark furniture, and other dark
elements. This made the walls the mid-value color, something your
brain understood intuitively, and kept the whole room in balance.
The clients loved the color so much, after a lot of friendly arguing and
back-and-forthing, that we based the rest of the first floor's color
schemes on it. On the right is a view from the dining room, through
the stair hall, into the living room. Each space has its own subtle
variation on the living room's basic color, and the result is harmony and
unity without boredom or monotony. I took care to introduce shots of
color, like greens, that would be complementary to this palette to provide
some sparkle and life. |
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| Here's a neat example of what
can be done with a little paint and some new molding. The picture on
the left is of a pair of built-in cabinets that the previous owners had
built for the family room addition. The budget, along with our
shared hate of waste, precluded replacing them completely, so I designed
some moldings and changed the overlay doors to inset panel flush doors,
added some nice iron strap hinges, and had them painted a nice, soft
greenish grey. I think you would agree that it totally changes the
character of the cabinets, from Holiday Inn to Roycroft Inn, as well as
the room. Unfortunately, I took this picture before we put up the
final window curtains. |
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