And Now, For A Little Color!

I just completed my site inspection at the beach which centered on paint and stain colors.

One of the most interesting things that has occurred with my work in Florida is the extreme effect the light has on hue.

Their light is much brighter and seems to have a bluer tint than ours therefore colors selected in my light,whether natural or artificial, do not translate when they hit the walls down there. This is the second time I have encountered it and am curious to know how other designers have handled it.

The colors originally selected were Benjamin Moore Seattle Mist (center) and Northern Cliffs (right) the chip on left is Puritan Gray and it was the accent color for the kitchen island.

This is what the chips look like.

 

 

On all jobs I have the painters test the colors before they begin so that we can see what happens in the client’s light.

Often if a room is filled with windows overlooking  foliage the paint will take on a green cast.

In areas that don’t get a lot of sunlight the paint may look gray so site testing is very important.

When I arrived this is the first thing that I saw. This was supposed to be the wall color but in this light and in the shadows cast by the staircase it looked olive green. Not good.

I suspected this was going to happen so I came armed with several other neutrals all in poster board size samples.

Hopefully you can see the different undertones represented by these boards.

It was absolutely crazy what happened when we pulled them out.  A color that looked like a soft, pastel blue lying on the work table went wedgewood as I started to lift it at a 45 degree angle and by the time it was vertical we had a dark blue-gray.

No one present could believe it. Scary.

The paint chemist in me came out and I began to experiment with 1/2 formula, 3/4 formula, etc. but none of it worked.

You can see what I’m talking about in this photo. Every wall is the exact same color but if you look at the stair wall on the second floor compared to the first the second looks blue ( it has a window with natural light coming in).

The wall to the right in what will be the kitchen looks orangey- yellow- it is picking up on the color of the raw pine which thankfully will be stained to reflect the proper hue.

Color selection is not for the faint of heart.

Boyd was as bum-fuzzled as I.

LOL  (My Daddy always says that. Is it a word?)

In the midst of all that, we had to take a break from paint to solve a tile problem.

A vanity shown as 5’11” on the plan had been field changed to over 10′ and we weren’t sure that there was enough tile to complete the backsplash.

Here we are counting every tiny piece of 2×2 tile we could find.

 Fortunately, we had enough- by about 6 tiles. Whew!

In the end…. I used the original trim color as the wall color. (shown on the bottom of the right board)

I chose another white altogether for the trim. ( shown on top of the right board)

The original wall color went from flat to semi-gloss and became the cabinet color. (shown on top of left board)

And I chose a blue, tinted almost 50% lighter than the original selection to use on the kitchen island. ( bottom left)

What do you think?

By the way do you know the difference between tint and shade?

You start with a hue (what we know as color i.e. red) Imagine that it is in the middle of a long horizontal line.

If you begin to add white, one drop at a time, moving to the left of hue you get pink ( a tint of red).

If you begin to add black, one drop at a time, moving to the right of hue you get maroon ( a shade of red).

Now, go impress your children.

What color stories do you have to tell? I would love to hear your experience with color selection.

And if you would like to say, “That was fun!” at the end of your project contact me at

http://www.cindybarganier.com.

Tile

There are so many beautiful options on the market for tile today that you could literally spend weeks trying to decide what to use. Unfortunately some of the options will seriously date your house so you have to think long-term when choosing the hard surfaces for a home. I tend to stay pretty classic but that doesn’t mean you have to be boring.

For instance the tile used for this master bath is a very sophisticated (some might even say sexy) product called textile that I found at Jenkins Brick.

It looks like the walls are covered with linen and comes in a nice range of colors. We used the 12 x 24 size with a staggered joint installation.

We wanted a very clean contemporary look so we kept the joints as small as possible and matched the grout to the “linen” lines as closely as we could (which also means less grout to clean). The tub by Victoria and Albert is a freestanding white work of art. It hasn’t been installed yet and I can’t wait to see it.

There are some tricks of the trade you can use to achieve a great custom look while using very reasonably priced in- stock tiles. For the childrens’ shower we used Antares Platinum (at an average cost of $3.60 sf) in various sizes and directions to accomplish a much more expensive look. The bottom 3/4 of the wall is done in 20″ x 20″ squares run straight. On top of this is a border of 4″ x 4″ tiles that mirror tiles on the floor. The top section is finished with 13″ x 13″ tiles run on the diagonal. The feel is that of tumbled marble without the price tag.

 

Short on space? Have your tile mason make a raised ledge out of your marble or granite. It is just big enough to hold a lovely silver shaving kit or a bar of soap and frees up the real counter. You have to carefully select your faucets though to make sure you have enough room to raise and lower the drain stopper. We didn’t think about adding the ledge until after the fact so we had to swap out the fixtures.

 Tomorrow is your last chance to sign up for the give away. Go here and scroll down to “Give Away!”  to find the rules on how to be entered in the drawing. If you are already registered but would like to better your chances get a friend to subscribe to the this blog; shoot me an email  (cindybarg@knology.net) telling me that they are your contact and your name goes in TWO MORE TIMES!

If you want to say, “That was fun!” at the end of your project contact me at www.cindybarganier.com.

 

 

Related articles

• Extra Large Subway Tile in the Bathroom (apartmenttherapy.com)

More Progress

We just completed the mid-May inspection of the Florida house. It is so exciting  to arrive after a 3-4 week absence and see the progress.  Have I told you how much I LOVE this builder? This trip was all about color, tile and light placement.

I was so pleased with the results of the whitewashing and glazing. We used a Benjamin Moore semi-transparent deck stain, cutting its color to 50% for use on the wall boards. The color, “Ashland Slate,” has a grey-green undertone. I will talk more about the process that we went through to arrive at the cabinet color in a later post. Color selection for this house was extremely tricky.

Notice also the addition of the ceiling beams. If you remember from the first post, the plans called for a painted, coffered ceiling the same as every other house in the neighborhood. To add character and visual weight to this room we wrapped the beams in a veneer of antique pine. What a difference!

  The next change (remember, proportion is king) was to run the flooring horizontally and not vertically. This meant that the boards would now visually expand the width of the room. You have to be careful with long rectangular rooms. Vertical floor boards can make them feel like bowling alleys.

 This changed allowed us  to add a lovely border around the perimeter of the room as a bespoke feature. Didn’t the floor guys do a fabulous job with that radius around the stairs! When it’s time to choose rug sizes start inside this border and come off 6″ so that you don’t cover it up.

Stay tuned!

And if you haven’t registered for the give away go here scroll down to Give Away! and follow the directions. 

To say, “That was fun!” at the end of your project contact me at www.cindybarganier.com