On food and color complexity
Spring is upon us! We’ve survived the deep freezing months of the year and are starting to freshen up our spaces for spring. Many of you are considering a project of some kind, perhaps a kitchen or bath remodel, an addition, or even building someplace new.
At the start and end of each calendar year, people love to hype about the new trend predictions and the latest look in home design. I saw a post by a realtor friend the other day asking for feedback on this color palette. He found it to be a little one-dimensional (I don’t disagree) and so encouraged his audience to paint with color and personality and just be prepared to paint everything Agreeable Gray before they sell. And while I agree with his “you do you” intent, I also disagree with the impulse to neutralize your home’s design in order to sell. (And for goodness sake, let’s all agree to move beyond Agreeable Gray for once and for all.)
If you’ll allow me a little soapbox moment, I think the dumbing down of design in order to appease an unsophisticated market is a damaging practice as a society. In the same way that restaurants (or sometimes parents) short-sightedly enable children to be picky eaters by only offering “kid-friendly” food options like chicken fingers and buttered noodles, we are raising humans with a narrow sense of taste and a limited understanding of complex flavor. The more we expose our children (and ourselves) to complex tastes, be it food or color, the more we enrich our minds and inspire deeper reflection.
In the early 2000’s it was Accessible Beige. Then the trend went gray, with all white kitchens, and now those trends are warming up the all-over whites. I get it — we do what sells. But we have seen many occasions when past clients have decided to sell after completion of a project that the overwhelming feedback of potential buyers was that the strong design made their property stand out from the masses and resulted in an overall increase in the value of their property.
Some quick tips when selecting colors for your home:
Look for the undertones beyond the categorical color that meets the eye. (Does that “blue” lean purple, green, yellow, or gray? Does that “white” go towards taupe, cream, or pink?)
When you paint — be it walls, cabinetry, or the exterior of a house — the color you choose will get magnified tenfold. Those undertones you picked out will become a MUCH stronger element over the course of the whole space.
If you’re not looking for your color choice to appear too bold or bright, find the overall color you’re imagining in your mind, and then follow down the color card to a softer, more neutral version of that same color. The effect it will have is the same as desaturating a photo just a touch, so it takes some of the intensity out while maintaining the tonality you hoped for.
And remember, if you don’t trust yourself to select a bolder color palette for your home, don’t be afraid to engage a designer to assist, just as you would trust a chef to create a recipe or prepare a more complex meal than you feel equipped to handle on your own.