posted
So, my daughter is getting married in a few weeks and I've been fielding gift questions from friends and family who want to know what her "colors" are - not for the wedding, but for her new home. I'm starting to feel like a failure as a mother, because not only does my daughter not have a clue what her "colors" are, but I've never had any "colors" either...
I've known women over the years who had house design books that they started as teenagers, and their houses today look exactly like the houses they began when they were 12 or 14. I think I'm missing a gene somewhere or something, because I just don't get it. And I really want to. I really want my home to be pleasant and comfortable and pulled together.
So how do I do this? I've been looking at online decorating sites, trying to get an idea of what I like and it's exhausting. Does anyone out there have a suggestion for a simple primer on basic home decorating? I thought I'd start with my bedroom and move out from there, but I really don't know where to start.
quote:I've known women over the years who had house design books that they started as teenagers, and their houses today look exactly like the houses they began when they were 12 or 14. I think I'm missing a gene somewhere or something, because I just don't get it.
These are the same women who, by the time they were eighteen or twenty, had a hope chest full of quilts and tablecloths and napkins and that sort of thing, right?
I've known some of these women, but I apparently didn't get that gene, either. I don't know. When I was 12 or 14 I had other things on my mind. Now, this is not to criticize the women of whom we speak. It's just that, at that age, getting married and setting up house was the farthest thing from my mind.
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posted
Yes, you're right lma, they probably did, and now their daughters do, too. <sigh>
I like to watch "Trading Spaces" sometimes, but that's really not what I need, I don't think. Maybe I should buy some magazines or something...
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posted
I have a dream house in my head. There's a lot of decorating schemes that I really like, and I can't pick just one, so my rooms are all going to be different schemes. Certain colors may cross over, but that's it. I can't imagine having anything to furnish this house when I was 14, though. I don't have anything NOW.
posted
I was on the Sims for a couple of hours the other day...building a house. I still didn't finish. Usually I'm not like that, though. I like to design layouts for my room, or design a house, but I don't get all girly about it. And the only reason I like decorating stuff is because I like doing artsy stuff.
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posted
Go into a furniture store. Without thinking of what you SHOULD like, wander around until you are standing by something that makes you happy. Note what the colors and textures are. If it is a neutral color, wander around until you find a piece - a couch, a picture, anything with fabric or texture - that contains a strong, definite color. That can be brown or something natural, but it needs to be definite.
Okay, google for a colorwheel. On the colorwheel, try to pick out that color. Directly opposite on the colorwheel will be the contrasting color, and if you draw a triangle, the two colors 1/3 of the way around the wheel from either side are the coordinating colors. Those three colors - the three points of the equilateral triangle - are your colors.
Look at that piece of furniture that made you happy again, or find another with a texture you like better. What is the texture? Is it made of dark wood? Light wood? Metal? Is it very sleek or is it a little fussy looking? Is it tailored or is it sumptuous and a little messy? Whatever the texture is, that can be the style you build on. If you don't like the idea of a whole room in that style, wander around until you see something that's in a style you like.
The cheapest and easiest way to change a bedroom is to paint the walls, change the fabrics, and put something on the walls. Paint is obvious - if one of your three colors is relatively neutral and unobvious, you can paint the whole that color. If it is dramatic, you can pick just one wall or a bookcase you're willing to paint. Same for the comforter. For the walls, my favorite thing to do is a get a canvas from a craft shop and a little acrylic paint and paint your own design. It doesn't have to be incredible art, but instead an infusion of color and/or shape (depending on the shape of the canvas).
posted
Wow, kat! That's so . . . organized and methodical! *laughs* I never did it that way. I've always started with furniture that I already had (I got a bunch of stuff when my grandfather moved away a few years ago), or got inexpensively, and just sort of decided what went with it. Not sure if the colors I think coordinate would be found in the right spots on a color wheel (I've never looked), but it works.
*grin* I guess I'm lacking the same gene as mb and lma, but I don't miss it much. When I thought about building a home when I was 14 (and I did think about it), furniture just wasn't what I was contemplating.
In fact, now that I think about it, when the girls in seminary threw a wedding shower for me and the two others who were about to get married, I got the off-white, goes-with-any-color towel set. (Although that was mostly because the girl selecting them knew what colors the walls of the bathrooms in the apartments the other two girls had rented were. Since the one I had rented was on the other side of the country . . . But maybe it was a sign. )
And maui babe, congratulations on your daughter's upcoming marriage!
posted
I've been thinking about this thread way too much. here are some of my required rooms in my dream house:
My bedroom: Purples, oranges, reds and golds, with silks and velvets. I want mosquito net over my bed, or a cool canopy with big thick velvet hangings. It'd have very dark wood furniture, and bamboo mats on the floor. And LOTS of big thick candles.
My kitchen: Green countertops, yellow walls, and white cabinets with glass in the doors. I guess that would mean I would have to keep the dishes all neat and stuff, but I might be able to do that. The dinner table would be really simple, light wood, and chairs with ARMS.
My Library: BIG windows, but dark wood, and rich deep greens, reds, blues, and browns. Very comfy chairs and a chaise lounge that no one but me is allowed to sit on. Gotta have a fireplace, and any wall space that isn't taken up by windows will have floor to ceiling bookcases.
My bathroom: Funky silly stuff. Either rubber duckies or frogs. Those big thick bath rugs, and bright yellow towels.
I'd probly also have some room with just shades of brown and white and beige, and just change the textures a lot, and have it very modern, but still very comfy. I also want to wallpaper an entire room with National Geographic maps.
My brother and his fiance had this discussion a month ago... they solved it very simply. Everything for right now is blue & white since they both like that and since they're young and very poor, they wanted something that will bring all of their studio apartment together. Except the china- White and platinum.. oh it's gorgeous.
Listen to Kat's advice. She's been helping me decorate my home and she's excellent! Everything actually goes together and looks like it was meant to work together. She has a talent for it.
Edit: kwsni- I love your room descriptions.. especially the bedroom and the library.
I thought of something else to start. Instead of the home decorating books, if you are looking for colors, go to a craft store and pick up one of the little oil painting instruction books that talk about color. There will be color wheels and lots of example of different color schemes in there. It's talking about painting, but it works for the house. If you look at the different colors schemes, you can kind of pick out the colors that you like, and most of the books should have a schematic that shows what other colors work with it.
Also, life is easier if you pick your neutral early. That's for things that you don't want colored, and it's usually white, off-white, beige, gray, tan, or some color in between. If the colors you liked are natural looking (moss green, soft brown, mauve, etc.), then off-white or beige. If it's pastels or primary colors, then probably white. If it's very, very intense jewel tones and you like a very clean, modern, or classical look, you can get away with gray. If you're not into very sparse, clean, and metal-sleek, I'd stay away from gray for the general rooms. It can look kind of dingy.
posted
It's not a gene - it's a language. I always thought of it as a way of looking at the world. If our thoughts are expressed through words, and a bigger vocabulary enables a wider range of thoughts, then the whole thing with color and design is learning the language of it to make your own sentences and paragraphs.
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I think it also has something to do with my personal inability to remember things in color. Colors don't make an impression on me at all. Textures, yes, but not color.
I once lived in an apartment for over three months, and someone asked me what color the living room was in my apartment. I had no idea. I can picture it (room placement, furniture, etc.) but usually in monochrome. I just have trouble remembering color
posted
Kat is so right about the color wheel!! After years of struggling with choosing colors for things, I stumbled on an idea like hers while I was working on those frames for my living room. All of a sudden, it clicked... all I had to do was pick ONE color, and draw a triangle to get the other two! It's like a cheat sheet for design. Posts: 1681 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
What kat says is absolutely correct for design and she's pretty much encapsulated in a couple of paragraphs all the essential information you find in even the biggest design books. The books just fluff it out with 100s of photos as that's what sells books.
But from what you wrote, maui babe, it doesn't sound like your planning to embark on a total re-design of your house, but just want to make what you already have look more "together", right? If this is the case then what you need to do is sit in each room and think about what you do there and what you like about it as it is. Start with that and remove everything that doesn't need to be in that room. (You can do this mentally if you don't want to actually remove things.)
Now take kat's advice on color and apply it to the essentials you have left in the room. Look at the walls. Is there a color in your essential items you could use as a starting point for choosing a complementary color for the walls or one accent wall? Come up with a color sceme you like based on what you know you are going to keep in the room. Anything that is going to clash with that scheme can come out. You can either use it in a different room, sell it, or trash it, or you could consider altering it to fit. Can you paint it or re-upholster it? If you're on a budget, an ugly end table can be covered with a cloth in a color you like.
If the room looks a little bare after doing this, and you have the budget, do a little shopping.
That said, there is nothing wrong with an eclectic style. I tend to lean towards the eclectic because I find adhering to one particular style a little too confining. Decorating might be a little harder if you choose this route, but kat's advice on color can help in bringing a sense of order to an ecletic design, too.
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posted
This is how I picked my colors, and it's similar to what Kat said.
I looked up my personal colors (using the season method) and then chose three colors within that spectrum that were close to contrasting on the color wheel.
Example: I'm a warm autumn. (This works well because my husband is a deep autumn so our colors generally match pretty well.) So I picked three colors, and used the richest, warmest color (a warm, golden yellow) as my main color, because it makes me happy to be home. Then I used the two contrasting colors to accent.
SO, not only do the colors look good together, and make us glad to be here, but they make US look great too!
posted
What I've always done is just look at people's houses that I like and steal their ideas. Also look through the house magazines and see what you think looks good and what doesn't.
I absolutely adored my aunt's house in Auburn (where I went to college) and she had the living room walls painted a cool Wedgewood blue. That's been my favorite wall color ever since. And I love blue and white china, too. About 10 years after I got my thing for blue and white china, it came into fashion in all the house magazines. Since then it's come and gone a few times, but I still love blue and white china. I like to collect plates of different pretty designs from the thrift store (or from my multitudinous female ancestors' gifts) and hang them up on the walls.
kat's method should work great, if you decide to try that approach. I've always liked houses, so I just paid attention all along to what I thought looked good and what didn't. Then I did my own house with the things I liked.
Paint is indeed the cheapest way to make a place look good.
I love how dark or bright splashes of color look on a pale neutral background. So if you have cream walls (and all the freaking house stuff is in neutrals now, (which are okay but not for the whole darn house)) then choose a dark or bright print to frame and put up to set it off. That looks great.
Use stuff you have, that makes you happy. I love to mix old and new, pretty and ugly. If you have only new pretty stuff in your house it lacks heart and looks sterile. So have some stuff that you inherited from great grandmother Johnson who had horrid taste, as well as some beloved homely things from your childhood, or whatever. The number one mistake of decorators is in putting too much stuff that's sleek and beautiful and new in people's houses. They look like law offices or something when people do that.
Hang pictures down low on the wall where they nestle and are closer to eye level. People tend to hang their pictures way too high on the walls. They aren't inviting and sensual that way. Fill the niche between the lamp and the chest, for instance.
I mostly go by what looks good to me. I think a house should make the person living there happy. That's the most important consideration. So choose what looks good to you, and ignore any advice or books that don't match your taste.
One of my favorite house books that I checked out of the library for years, and finally bought, is Colour in Decoration. I love especially the pictures of Charleston, the house of Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, who painted it all up in gorgeous ways, as well as designing fabrics for use as curtains, and so on. It's now preserved as a museum. I think they were part of that Bloomsbury crowd of literati in Britain that included Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville West and so on. Their house is gorgeous!
[ July 16, 2004, 12:49 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
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posted
This isn't advice; I'm just rambling about what I did.
I got my couches because I liked their design, not because of the color necessarily. They are sort of moss green, but the style is a comfortable art deco. That means...that means that the couch designer was more concerned with how the couch filled the available space instead of the details on it. All those modern chairs that have solid tapestry and interesting shapes are of that style. These couches are tailored (not overstuffed) and have gentle curves on the outside edges.
In the living room, the only thing with any real carving or frills or decoration is the wood. The coffee table is dark warm wood with designs carved into it (inherited), and my two new bookcases that I love are rosewood Shaker style, also with same minimal carvings. That, plus the throw blanket that was given to me as a teenager, is about all the frill I can take. The walls have prints of art and black and white photographs. The prints of paintings all have a similar color pallete, (Dali, Van Gogh, and Leighton.), and the frame photographs add texture without color. Everything that is framed is framed in undecorated basic black, so the pictures all look like they belong together. There are a few paintings of my own that I've done, and I'd link except I'm lazy and haven't gotten my portfolio up. They have the same basic colors though. So the colors in my living are moss green; dark, warm wood; silver for the tabletop frames and metal needs; and dark orange (the wingback chair) and cobalt blue (the rug, the 2' x 3' canvas on the wall, and the vase on the coffee table) for the accents. The neutral is beige by default (I can't repaint the walls), but I'd make them just slightly off-white if I had my choice.
The accent colors of orange and cobalt blue came from a few happy, accidental purchases of blue vases and that Van Gogh painting.
My bedroom is not decorated at all. It is filled with electronic equipment, a mattress for sleeping on the floor, a Harry Potter tapestry, and pin ups of Tobey Maquire and young Marlon Brando (thank you Entertainment Weekly).
posted
Thanks for all of your advice. I'm living alone this summer (for the first time in my life ) so maybe I'll have time to hang out in furniture stores and get a feel for what I like.
I plan to start in my bedroom, and I'm thinking I'm going to use ivory, plum or rose and forest green. There's probably a name for that color scheme (Venetian or something), but I have a long way to go before I speak that language.
Thanks for the good wishes for the wedding too. I'm a bit overwhelmed at the thought of being mother of the bride (I'm FAR too young for one thing), but I'm looking forward to it. I get to travel to the mainland, for one thing! I haven't been out of state since August 2001, and it'll be nice to have a change of scenery (even though the scenery here is breathtaking).
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I'm starting to feel like a failure as a mother, because not only does my daughter not have a clue what her "colors" are, but I've never had any "colors" either...
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) so maybe I'll have time to hang out in furniture stores and get a feel for what I like.
