Colour!

 Colour makes me so happy.

I found this little publication at work today and I can't get enough of it!  It is published by AkzoNobel and is the result of international colour trend research by their Aesthetic Centre.  Seriously, I'm in the wrong field.  I could just travel, researching and photographing colour??  Someone should have informed me of this.

Anyway, if you go to the Colour Futures site, you will find two wonderful downloads, the first of which is the finished publication you see above.  The second, and in my opinion, the much better book is the notebook - the making of the colour futures book.  It's basically what I always hoped my journals would like like when I was younger.  Every page is yummy and wonderful and filled with COLOUR and inspiration.  Here is a taste of some of the images.

 

 

Go download it!  Do it.  Now!

Someone save me from myself

Why on earth I get myself in these situations, I have no idea... and how I get out of them every time is a mystery to me too!!

Here is what has transpired in the last few days, since my last post:

We go to pick up the chaise and it doesn't fit in the car (by 1/2 inch on either side... grrrr). So the next day we rent a pick-up truck. It still ends up being about $40 cheaper than delivery, so sweet deal.

So we pick it up and put it in the room. We don't unpack it b/c we have to get the truck back and get some paint samples (I have the swatch with me)

We spend an hour at Home Depot, (as always) pick out four colour combinations we would like to see downstairs that match the swatch I have with me and get samples of the living room colours from each scheme in little cans so we can see it on the wall.

We get home and unwrap the chaise.

It looks... purple.
Which is strange, because we could have sworn it was a beigey/grey colour in the store.

I switch out all the light bulbs - we still have the original incandescent ones in the living room - to CFLs.

Ahhh.. much better.

We paint four colours on the wall: Decent, Hate it, Don't Like it, Decent-est.

The one we actually liked the most is called Ivory Lace - a warm white. The other colours in this scheme we picked out are a coral colour called Colonial Brick for accents and a dark burgundy/purple for the dining area. We have to work with the chaise that seems to look purple if you put it by some colours and green if you put it by others.

Did I ever tell you that grey is hard to work with??? Because it is.

The latest site I have been using for inspiration is Color-Collective. (When I remember who told me about this, I'll let you know). It's pure genius. Here are some of my favourite colour schemes. Hubs hasn't chimed in on what he thinks just yet.

What do you guys think??  My favourites are the first and last. I do think I will start out with a warm white for the main space and then develop the room based on one of these schemes... slowly, piece by piece.

(Note: the reason we need a new scheme, instead of continuing with this one, is because after my beautiful blue sofa is gone, that scheme will no longer match the furniture... sigh...)

Say 'No' to Beige

Oh beige... the bane of my existence the last couple years.  Honestly, beige in-and-of-itself is a fine tone, but it seems that everyone, in this country at least, has forgotten that there are... wait for it... other colours!! I know, crazy idea. (Is it just me, or is it slightly ironic that I'm over-saturated by the colour beige?)

When we were selling our last house, we went from a ridiculous array of colours (it was my house as a university student and 'fun' was definitely the theme) to beige... everywhere.  Okay, the kitchen and bathroom were taupe.  I know, risky.  But the truth is, so many people cannot see their own furniture within a space unless you give them a 'neutral' background.  We began painting long before the house was sold and so we got to spend quite a bit of time in our beige bubble - it even started getting to Tony (let's be honest, it started getting to me the day we finished painting everything).  But it got the house sold, and that was the point.  It actually looked pretty good, it was just... so beige. (I think our bland, student furniture contributed to the overall blahness of the space.)

So now we're in our new house and it's beige... wonderful.  Well, the living room is anyway, along with the living room carpet, which puts us, once again in a beige bubble.

Since there hasn't been much activity going on here lately in terms of anything valid to share with you, I thought I would post our intended colour scheme for the house.  So far, the master bedroom and guest room have been painted and the rest waits patiently.

The overall intent is to paint the downstairs in dark earthy tones.  It's meant to be a very comfy and hugging space, and since our windows are large, I think we can get away with such dark tones.  The accent wall is the wall behind the stairs that connects the two levels, so we tried to find something that would look good with both the brown and the straw colour for the hallway (see some beigey-toned colour - I'm not completely against it, I promise!)

I'm most excited for the dining room - I've always wanted a really intense, dark dining area. It's more reminiscent of the colours that would have been in this house originally. Check this out:

Great, isn't it?? And I thought our colours were intense.  I got it from Old House Colours, a great site to give you inspiration for your old house, whether it's Victorian or Arts & Crafts.

So back at our house....
The upstairs, being the sleeping and working area, is meant to be a retreat, hence the softer colour pallet in the hallway and bedrooms.  The inspiration for the master started with this baby:

We try to buy as much as we can from the Restore, second hand stores and garage sales, but Ikea is still a serious vice for me (and now that we moved within a ten-minute drive, I really have to be careful, yikes!).  Anyway, we loved this image as soon as we saw it - it's about eight feet across and five feet tall - and it emanates the exact vibe we wanted in our bedroom: a calm, serene escape.

The main bathroom needs some serious sex-appeal - I think you can all attest to that!  With the dark tiles we figured an intense grey would be perfect, and even though it is a step away from the lighter tones upstairs, the neutrality (is that even a word?) of the grey still works with everything else.  We are in the process of painting all the accessories (and maybe fixtures) black, so it'll look really sharp when it's done.

Thanks for stopping by!
-a.