Metro Pulse/Cover/The Home & Garden Issue

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East Eden
All that's needed to bring Knoxville's prospective arboretum to fruition is the stuff that doesn't grow on trees

Color, Color Every Wall...

Born to Crop
The addictive allure of scrapbooking

...but not that shade of pink! We look at choosing a color you can live with.

by Scott McNutt

You have a room you need to paint, you pick a color you like, you paint. End of story, right?

Puh-leaze.

Choosing the "right" color for a room depends on far more than your personal likes. Factors such as current color trends, function of the space, compatibility with the color scheme of the room's furniture and accessories, the balance and flow of energy in the house (i.e. feng shui), and your own tastes must all be taken into account.

If you want it, plenty of help is available. Scads of interior design firms are ready to offer you the benefit of their expertise. The good folks at your nearby hardware store can be consulted. "How-to" books are crowding one another off the shelves of the closest bookstore. Whole television networks (Home & Garden, Do It Yourself) have sprung up to assist you with tasks like selecting paint color. If you have Internet access, you can call up information from specific shows on those networks, as well as a wealth of data from other color-centric sites. And you can always ask Mom.

But instead, you're reading this. Here are some basics:

Trends

An organization called the Color Association of the United States actually does a yearly color forecast that most color-dependent industries (e.g., textiles, paints) and organizations (e.g., the American Society of Interior Designers) pay serious attention to. It is this organization's forecast that determines which colors are "in" for the year. However, getting their forecast requires money, so we'll use the 2003 forecast from a similar organization, the Color Marketing Group ("The Premier International Association for Color and Design Professionals"). Its report, entitled, "Blues Dominate 2003 Consumer Color Directions," says, in part,

"[T]he ailing economy is the primary influence on the 2003 Consumer Color Directions Palette. "We have experienced new found energy using full chroma hues.... With a rebel yell, we protest a total shift to 'establishment colors'," said Barbara Lazarow, CMG, Co-Chairman, Consumer Color Direction Committee.... "For color we look to the prosperous times of the 20's and 60's and to the glamour of the 30's and 40's..."

This translates into colors with names like Soda Green, Iron Ore-ange, and Cinder Blue, and descriptions such as "Lemon Meringue: Silver flirts with gold in this zesty confection reminiscent of the Great Gatsby and vintage roadsters." You can find a complete list of the 2003 colors at the Color Marketing Group's website.

Function

Psychologists and color experts agree that different colors affect the human nervous system in different ways. So choosing colors that fit with a room's intended use is smart. In general:

Greens help with anxiety; good for bedrooms, bathrooms, and other rooms that serve quiet purposes.

Yellows stimulate nerve endings; good for kitchens and morning rooms; overuse can cause irritability.

Reds increase heart rate, blood pressure, and appetite; good for dining and living rooms, and other spaces that emphasize activity.

Blues are calming, lowering blood pressure and depressing appetite; good for bedrooms and bathrooms, and probably rooms in which you don't want people eating.

Browns instill feelings of security and contentment; good for any room, but especially entryways and dens.

Whites can also be used in any room, but overuse can make an environment feel sterile. Blacks should be used sparingly, in conjunction with other colors.

Feng Shui

Nancy C. Canestaro, D. Arch., is a local design consultant who applies the principles of feng shui in her work (she also does a free monthly presentation on the basics of feng shui at the Green Earth Emporium). In feng shui, specific colors are associated with the Five Elements recognized by the ancient Chinese: green with wood, yellow/brown with earth, white/gold with metal, blue/black with water, and red/purple with fire. The interplay of these elements (as represented by the colors) determines the quality, or energy, of a room.

To Western thinking, this may seem akin to alchemy, but Canestaro says Western concepts of color are not so far removed from those of feng shui. Canestaro opines that the Western practice of choosing colors to suit a room's function matches feng shui "on a basic level. But it's much more refined in feng shui. Remember, they've been doing this for 2,000 years. We look at it and say, 'Red increases the heart rate,' and that's as far as we take it; feng shui takes it much deeper.... Color is light reflected into your eyes from an object. Different colors have different wavelengths. Different wavelengths produce different effects on us."

Compatibility

The most basic approach to room color is the 60-30-10 rule. If you're happy with a meat 'n' potatoes look in a room, an interior designer will likely advise you to make 60 percent of the room (usually the walls) one color; another 30 percent, say, the trim, curtains, and large furniture another color; and use a third color for the remaining 10 percent, such as lamps, throw rugs, etc.

If you have no strong feelings about what color a room should be, simply choose a color that fits its function, consult a color wheel and apply one of the following color schemes:

Complementary: These colors are those that lie exactly opposite on the color wheel. Choose one color as the dominant color, its opposite as the secondary color, and another shade of that color for the rest.

Analogous: These color "families" lie beside each other on the color wheel. Choose a dominant color and your other two colors are the ones on either side of it.

Monochromatic: Using this scheme means choosing a dominant color and using varying tints (lightening of a color) and shades (graying of a color) of that color for the room's appointments.

Near complements: This scheme is for more adventurous decorating. As your secondary colors you use colors from families to the left and right of the color complementary to your dominant color.

Taste

This is only a cursory introduction to color schemes. Obviously, they can be far more complex. For instance, if, like I did, you walk into a design firm and say to a designer, "I have a room to color, and I want a color scheme that's trendy, functional, makes a statement about my personal tastes and accommodates my family's," you've really complicated matters.

Margaret Butler, AIA with Cockrill Designing & Planning is at first nonplused with my question. But, happily for her, she says with a smile, "I've never had a client come to me with that set of criteria. Most clients come with a set of programmatic needs: 'I have three bedrooms and two guest rooms and I want to do this.' Through books, magazines, and sketches and research, we try to establish what kind of design character they ultimately want these rooms to have."

But, I persist: What do you do if a client has a bunch of contradictory desires?

Butler says diplomatically, "It boils down to, we are service providers. Clients come to us for our professional advice. It's like any other profession. You can go to an accountant, and he'll say 'do your taxes this way,' or you can go to a doctor and she'll say 'take your medicine and exercise.' Now a person is going to either take the advice or not.... Most of the time, though, they value the advice and the project experience we bring to the table."

And if you hire a professional designer to help you color your home, "value their advice" would be my advice to you.