Here you will find some design challenges discussed. We'll consider how to make use of things you already have whether it is a rug, or curtains, or a red brick fireplace. We'll choose different problems to deal with and also present some ideas for using second hand furniture you might find at a yard sale or even the recycling-transfer station. The ideas presented might just give you the confidence to move forward or you are welcome to write to us and present your challenge which we will think about and try to address. Articles below include how to deal with a red brick fireplace, an Attic bedroom, Purple walls, open space design and a view of a reclaimed primitive side table.
|
Design Challenge-Dead White-UGH (cont'd)
TRADITIONAL
With the blue scheme, continue the blue for the wall decorations. You
can’t have too many pictures, painting, or posters. Keep all the
frames alike and make blue the dominant color in the paintings,
posters, etc. If you are using carpeting, choose a muted blue gray, a
medium tone. You can use the same carpeting for each of the bedrooms or
a color that will blend.
The master bedroom could easily have a gray theme, using traditional furniture in a dark wood tone:
Carpeting, curtains, the bedspread, in different shades of gray.
Wall decorations now also in shades of gray, dark, light, lighter.
For accent colors, you can use wine red or burnt umber.
Use these same colors for toss pillows. If there is an upholstered
chair, or a chaise, you can use fabric with a pattern, stripes,
geometrics, flowers, tapestry look in grays, wine reds, and a third
accent color, such as navy.
Bedroom two also takes its cue from the hall, this time with a soft
pastel blue for it’s anchor color with accents of a contrasting color,
in a range of light to medium tones.
The pastel blue carpeting and curtains would work well with a cream color bedspread, toss pillows in darker shades.
Artwork is displayed in ivory color frames and has as it’s dominant color, pastel blue.
But what if you have a teenager dying for purple, fuschia, and lime
green. Maybe you need to stretch a bit and do a midnight blue
bedspread, lime green, fuschia toss pillows, blue gray carpet and
curtains. Artwork repeats the fuschia, lime green, and midnight blue.
CONTEMPORARY
Now, let’s consider the contemporary quilt as our starting point. You
then continue with bright yellow as the anchor color for the artwork
in the halls. Frames are in bright yellow and the artwork itself
incorporated strong yellow.
The carpet color depends on whether or not you are adults who pad
around in slippers or whether or not there are children. A soft yellow
carpet could stay clean if there were just adults. If not, a dark gold
would be a good choice.
The master bedroom can offer the low key contrast with straw shades on
the bed, the floor, at the windows, and for pillows, artwork a
contrasting color of light to medium greens.
The second bedroom can have burnt orange carpeting, off white curtains,
burnt orange bedspread, burnt orange artwork with contrasting colors,
greens and blues.
Finally, the eat in kitchen needs our attention.
We are going to have to live with the white walls and the white kitchen
cabinets. Now we must try to find where we can we add color when
there’s not a lot left. Look at the floor. This will be your anchor
color, like it or not.
If the floor is a light color use a darker shade for curtains. If the
floor is dark, use a much lighter shade at the windows. Is it a black
and white tile? These are neutral colors. Let’ forget them here in the
kitchen. Pick a color you like and do the curtain treatment, finding
your anchor color there.
For artwork, use the same colors.
Put brightly colored seat pads on the chairs using the anchor color.
Buy dishes in the same color, darker or lighter.
If you are painting the dining table and chairs, you again use the anchor color.
Tablecloths and napkins can be the anchor color or a contrast
As long as you keep using different shades of the anchor color, the
room will come alive and be coordinated. . If the floor is a burnt
orange, tablecloths can repeat this color or be a deep green, patterned
or solid and you can display copper pots and pans to your heart’s
content.
Bathrooms mustn’t be forgotten. Here you can show how clever you are
with the towels, shower curtains, bath mats, wall decorations. I hate
to admit it but I love white towels but if you must have midnight blue,
it will be fine.
So, we’ve done it, although we didn’t consider the dining room if there
is one. That’s because it needs to have the same color scheme as the
living room. Remember the sneaker and the sandal? The differences will
be in the artwork. It can be really exciting to go looking for
paintings, posters, photographs with the colors you need and the
subjects you find appealing.
Part 3 of this series will explore artwork and wall decorations. Until
then, off you go to the paint store for blue gray paint chips. Have fun! (C)2009Ruth Graham
|
Design Challenge-Bright Red Sofa.
You love the guy, his apartment and the park it overlooks, but what faces you, as you enter, walk through the hall, the kitchen, the living room?
Ouch! It blazes like the rocket launch to Mars. It's a bright red entrance hall leading to a bone white living room with a bright red, brand new sofa.
The obvious solution as any idiot can immediately figure out, is Craig's list. However, the sofa was a present from his mother who lives ten minutes away by motorcycle, which she drives, wearing her leather jacket and big sunglasses. She is, by the way, very sensitive, cries easily, likes Pinot Grigio in long stemmed glasses, and has occasional bouts of depression. Options narrow.
Clearly, bright red is not your thing unless it's on your lips or dessert: strawberries and cream at Wimbledon or "New Dawn," Grandma's climbing rose over the back porch.
Remember, that mountains are made to climb over. Accordingly, here are some things to think about, wrapped around the way a room makes you feel when you walk into it. You're on a limited budget so start by buying unfinished wooden side tables, a coffee table, a bookcase, and an entertainment table for television and hi-fi. Now, we choose some colors.
• Want the room to scream with the sofa blasting out at you. Keep the walls white. Paint all the tables, bookcase, and entertainment center black. Get black metal lamps with red or pink shades. Buy a red and black room sized rug, a few posters in red and black and invite Mum over for a glass of wine. gin.
• Want the room to have a mellow feel with the sofa making a gentle impact? Paint the walls in a dark taupe, or a medium grey. Paint the tables the same color, just one shade darker.
• Want the room to be somber, with the sofa and love seat nestling into the background, paint the walls a shade of medium brown. Paint the furniture or better yet, buy wood finished in a natural medium brown, or finish it yourself.
• Want the room to be jumping up and down like acrobats flying through the air and the sofa doing somersaults? Paint the walls lipstick pink, orange, purple, or turquoise.
Personally, here's what I'd do. I'd buy stain and Tung oil and finish the tables, etc., a soft brown. I'd paint the walls in a lighter shade of brown. I'd buy an earth brown carpet or dark finished wood floors. The lamps would be brass with off white shades. Wall decorations would be posters, repeating red shades of brown. Check out reproductions of Monet.
Now, let's have Mum roar over on her Harley.
Put on some Mozart. Attack the cork on a chilled Pinot Grigio and pour, using your long stemmed glasses. Bring out tortilla chips, your best guacamole, for color contrast, and toast both Mum and the bright red sofa.
|
| Design Challenge- Open Plan Living Space: kitchen, dining room, work area, and family room. There was hardly any space for a coffee table. But what about recycling? What about yard and barn sales for the perfect size and style? Well, here it is, an old primitive table, just a few pieces of wood nailed together and painted, left to fend for itself, poor thing. It was sitting in the yard next to a collapsed Adirondack chair. It had probably been there behind the garage for at least 60 years, withstanding summer heat, winter snow, and providing shelter for chipmunks. It needed major help. First it required some serious straightening. Four little blocks of wood, still awaiting some green paint, were hammered in against the legs to force it to stand straight, or at least almost straight. Then, where it had rotted out along the edge, major sanding was necessary to keep your hands safe from splinters. After that, a light sanding for the top and all around and we popped it into place as a coffee table in front of the contemporary leather love seat. This table has character. If you do any rescues, send us the pictures. And we will bring photographs to Design Challenge tp illustrate this open space room so you can see colors, styles, and different areas all working together.
|
 |
| White birch finish, cream colored upholstery and an old weather beaten table |
|
|
Design Challenge-Small Living Room, Dark Floors
The room will look larger with off white walls or a very pale yellow.
Then for all the wood furniture, choose a white birch finish. For example, table legs on your coffee table and side tables should be the soft white birch or something similar. The upholstery should be a little bit darker. Take a look at the picture above.
The upholstered pieces should be small. Stay away from anything that looks heavy.
Where you can, like the sofa and side chair, have the furniture legs showing. This keeps the room from looking stuffed and closed in. Again, you can see the effect in the picture above.
For your accent color, toss three bright pillows on the sofa. With pale yellow or off white walls, you can use light green or shades of burnt orange.
Table lamps and standing lamps should be brass or light wood. Lampshades should be off white.
A bright bowl, a vase, picture frames should be in your accent color, green or burnt orange, the same as you chose for your pillows. If you use artificial flowers in the vase, choose those in the yellow, burnt orange, or brown shades. Dried grasses look great. For the bowl, choose colored painted objects in the same colors or fake dried fruit: bananas, green grapes, lemons, limes, oranges.
Follow the same colors for picture frames and wall decorations.
This might help to get you started. Visualize some pale yellow daffodils growing around a big old oak tree. Translate the bark of the oak tree to the color on the floor and there is your color scheme.
The room will look great.
|
|
Design Challenge-Purple Walls: You're a teen-ager, recently graduated from being a dumb pre teen who persuaded her parents to paint her bedroom walls purple, otherwise known as a super bowl design challenge, in some ways worse than a red brick fireplace.
On the plus side we already have an excellent quality medium blue rug and parents who say they will give you $100 to redecorate your room. You've saved $50 and two sets of Grandparents are each contributing $25 to the project. .
First thing you need to decide, now that you are a teen, is what effect you want to create, modern with lots of black, white and gray, feminine with pink, white, and frills or in-between. What is appealing? Well, you say, help. How do I know? The answer is this. Cut the whole project down to size, human size.
Look around at the way your fellow teens dress and describe them. That should help. Some individuals, male female, any age, dress conservatively with colors blending well. Nothing screams out at you, neither jewelry, makeup, clothes design, hair color, hair style. It's all calm, restrained, selective, relaxed.
Do you like the effect?
Then there is just the opposite, 12 to 80. Everything screams: clothing, design and color, hair style and color, makeup, overly heavy and brash, jewelry in every place possible and impossible. Clearly, if they were prisoners, the ACLU would be screaming torture. But never mind, the effect is aggressive, vigorous, flamboyant, unrestrained.
So, how do you want your room, conservative or unrestrained, or maybe in the middle?
Most young people want somewhat flamboyant and if that describes you, keep purple walls. It will be a home run for achieving aggressive/flamboyant and also save money on paint. Find a bedspread you like, a solid color in any shade of blue to blend with the rug. So we have two colors, purple and blue. What we need is more purple. Find some curtains in a lighter shade than the walls. Now go to garage and yards sales and get a desk plus second hand tables for the bedside. We need flamboyant and here's where you get it. Paint the tables and desk fuschia. Then get yourself three pillows for the bed, two in blue, one in orange or fuschia. If you have money left over get, yourself a big white stuffed animal with an orange bow around its neck, to put on the bed. Please send me a picture.
If money is in short supply when it comes to the curtains, just buy white. Buy fuschia or purple ribbon and make tiebacks. For wall decoration, look for posters with contemporary design using a combination of purple, orange, light green, fuchsia. If you buy prints with frames, stay with all the same wood color, or paint the frames either fuschia or orange.
And remember, when you graduate from flamboyant /aggressive to calm and peaceful, you'll have a good start with your blue rug and blue bedspread. All you will need to do is repaint the walls, tables, and desk, and replace the curtains.
Want conservative? Paint the walls white tinged with yellow. Buy a white bedspread. Buy the second hand tables and paint them white. Buy three pillows for the bed, two in shades of blue, one in sunflower yellow. Curtains should be white. Your stuffed animal can be a tawny gold leopard with black spots or a white teddy bear with a blue bow. Your wall decorations can be posters with these colors. Essentially your room is blue and white with accents of sunflower yellow.
For something in the middle, do the walls in soft white with a hint of yellow. Now decide on what shade of the yellow family you like. Let's say it's sunflower yellow. Use that color for the bedspread and a lighter version of it for the curtains. Paint your bedside tables and your desk in a deeper yellow than the walls. Your room is essentially shades of yellow with a blue rug. Now you want to find some blue toss pillows for the bed and wall decorations with blue and yellow.
Oh, to be a teen-ager again, with purple walls, a blue rug, and an orange teddy bear!
|
DESIGN CHALLENGE-Red Brick Fireplace: Let's be honest. Red Brick is for garden walks, outdoor barbecues, and covering with needlepoint for a doorstop. But if you are stuck with a red brick fireplace, do not despair. With careful planning you might grow to love it. The worst thing you can do is make believe it isn't there.
A red brick fireplace can be a difficult design element in a room but if that is what you are saddled with, there are ways to live with it other than painting it white or black which is problem in itself. The painted white fireplace soon looks dirty and is impossible to clean, and either color will have difficulty adhering.
So, let's leave it unpainted and see how we can live with it.
Let's consider leaving the floors a natural color and buying a patterned rug, with brick reds. The Oriental patterns are easy to integrate, mostly the red that blends with the brick shade of your fireplace. Native Indian designs should also be considered and contemporary designs, the bolder swirly ones are a good choice. Whichever you choose, make sure you check the shade of red. It should be in the same family as your fireplace. Find a paint chip that is the same and take this chip to the carpet store to help with your rug or carpet selection.
The upholstered furniture can be one of the secondary colors in the rug. Usually, you can find Orientals with deep blues if you like contrast or sand colors if you prefer a subdued look. Whatever you do, stick to one color and just vary the shades. Basically, your room is going to be in the red family with beige/pink walls, fireplace, and main carpet color. The secondary color is blue or sand. Check the wall color samples in the paint store against the rug you are planning to buy.
Now let's think about accents, finding some strong shapes, decorative objects such as a vase, a bowl for pot-pourri, etc. Hopefully, you've found some great looking pottery, a similar shade of the fireplace brick, as vivid as you like. The reason for the pottery accents is to repeat the texture that the fireplace establishes. The repetition of the texture and vivid color, in small amounts, will be very effective.
And then for the wall hangings, posters, paintings, you need to hunt for the same repetition in colors. Obviously there will other colors in these objects but as long as they are minor rather than major, these other colors only add interest and "buzz" to the room. It's beginning to sound like fun. And the interesting thing is that if ten people went out with these guidelines in hand, they would all have differing results, all pleasing, and exciting.
Maybe we better see if we can find a condo or apartment with a red brick fireplace. Maybe everyone should have one.
|
Design Challenge-Attic Bedroom
Given: Little windows, dark room, plus ibright coral flowered bedspread, two mismatched peeling brown painted tables, $300 budget.
Let's go over to the paint store and look at their paint chips. Chooset a white tinged paint with a few drops of coral for the walls. After that we need to find a way to work in lots more coral shades wherever space permits, the floor, the wall posters, and little decorative objects. Paint remover will take the peeling paint off the old tables and then they can be painted a dull coral..
For the bedside tables, hopefully round, you can buy some coral velvet, make a tablecloth and drape the particle board tables you can find at Home Depot for under $30.00..
A light coral shimmery fabric would be great for the windows. It would make the most of any light at all, outside light or from lamps. We'll keep the lampshades off white, blending with the wall color.
We'll paint a piece of cardboard we get at the paint store with the room color and take that piece of cardboard with us when we look at lamp shades, curtain material, or other accessories.
For window shades or venetian blinds, we'll choose off white, blending with the wall color and for the woodwork we'll do off white as well. Attics are usually a bit dark and need all the help they can get.
With any money left over we'll buy a standing lamp, one with an up light to illuminate the ceiling. The room will feel lighter and bigger. And maybe for a birthday or christmas, someone might come up with a rug, repeating the shades of brown and coral.
Any banners or posters should repeat the main colors, either exactly, or with shades of brown and coral. If you have picture frames be sure they are all the same color wood or paint them them all the same color.
A brown teddy bear will be very happy on the coral bedspread.
|
|
|
