A Forever Color For Your Home

We have been busy, busy helping our clients furnish their new homes or updating existing spaces. It is so rewarding and fun to help create such inspiring spaces. After all, home is now the center of our world.

There are many things to consider when you decide to re-decorate your home, but few are as important as color.  

Saturated color on your walls can be challenging to work with, as you have probably already discovered. It tends to dictate the direction of all of your other choices as well as has the potential to become dated over a shorter period of time. Luckily, there are a few "forever" colors that are featured throughout every era. These tend to be shades of white and ivory.   

Shades of white and ivory have the unique ability to make the interior of a home look and feel more luxurious and refined. They also make a home feel larger and airier. Unlike saturated colors, shades of white never go out of style and are a foolproof decorating strategy as they easily pair with all of your other favorite colors that you may want to use in your home.    

Painting your walls a neutral shade of white is a fabulous way to get unstuck and give your home a five-star facelift.   Often, our clients are resistant to a fresh coat of paint throughout their homes, but when they do it, the results are fantastic! 

You might be asking, so what shade should I use? Each home is a little different when considering the materials already in the house and how much natural light comes into each room. And are you leaning towards making your space feel warmer or cooler? Shades of white are complicated.

Making the right choice is based a lot on personal preference, but it always helps to work with an expert. That is where we come in.  

Before helping you select paint colors for your home, we always set up a complimentary in-home appointment. We will help you find the right shades that work well with the materials and furnishings that you have and for the new pieces that you would like to bring into your home for an updated look.  

In general, traditional spaces typically would lead toward warmer shades of white such as 'simply white' or 'decorators white'.  

A more modern home might consider a cooler shade such as 'bright white' which tends to give a gallery feel, allowing you to easily feature lots of different colors and textures.

One of the things I know for sure is that decorating your home can be intimidating. It's even intimidating for us when we choose to go it alone. None of us, except maybe Kelli (LOL), take this task up alone. We always consult with each other when making modifications in our own homes. Why? Because we don't want to have the cookie cut rendition of what is possible. We want our homes to be gasp-worthy, comfortable, and beautiful - and to achieve that, we need our talented team that can help think outside of the box.  

You know what they say...

A few other considerations for using shades of white in your home:

Add a Light Colored Rug

One of the best ways to hide an old, unsightly floor that you no longer love is to add a plush ivory rug. One that is either monochromatic or has a classic pattern.  

Light-colored rugs are a great way to lighten up a room and make it feel more luxurious and new. If your home has a lot of heavy, dark furniture, you might want to consider a shade of light grey, so the contrast isn't as drastic.   

Use Lots of Layers and Texture

Shades of white have gotten a bad reputation for being boring or flat. And it certainly can be if you haven't added the necessary elements to keep it interesting...pillows, throws, rugs, and accessories.

Without these, a room (no matter what color) is simply incomplete. On the flip side, I would argue a home with heavily saturated wall color without great furniture and lots of well thought out layers and textures also looks less than inspiring...and often dated.  

Use the Right Light Bulbs

As we are all tending to replace the bulbs and incandescents in our homes with long-lasting, energy-saving LED alternatives, we need to choose the right color temperature. It makes a difference.  

The wrong bulb choice can make a lovely ivory sofa look yellow. If you want a room to appear whiter, then you need to look at 'Kelvins', which is simply the scale used to describe color temperature. 3500K-4100K will be a white light. 3100K or below will create warmer tones by adding a bit of yellow.   It is worth playing around with a bit before you buy all of your bulbs!

Make it a bright week!  We are at your service if you are in the mood for a little of your own home inspiration.