Why do Americans Have a Fascination with White Ceilings?

Painting your ceiling white is not necessary or even always a good idea. White paint will not always make your room look larger, cleaner and more fashionable. Sometimes it will, but sometimes it’s a big mistake. Mostly, people paint their ceilings white because they don’t know what else to do. I’m not exactly sure when white ceilings became the fashion, though I suspect the country’s fascination with white paint began in 1893 at the Chicago World’s Fair. The famed White City made of white stucco and brightly lit with the new-fangled street lights must have been an entrancing alternative to the dark countryside and dimly lit city streets filled with dark tenement buildings.

Changing Two Paint Colors Takes Contemporary Architecture from OK to Gorgeous

Have you ever painted your house and when it was done, wondered why the paint job didn’t look as good as you thought it would? Changing paint colors doesn’t have to be a complete re-do. With a few strategic changes of color you can get the look and pizzaz you want by changing only the colors or areas that make the most difference, rather than repaint the entire exterior of your home.

Painting a Brown Accent Wall

Painting one wall a strongly different color than the others creates an accent wall. Only paint a accent wall if there is something on that wall or the architecture in that part of the room that you wish to emphasize. Click here to read more about accent walls.
How much brown is too much? When you have a lot of brown wood and still want more brown, I suggest that you choose an accent color that has brown (or a warm base color) in it, but is different from the wood.

Add an Accent Wall to Update a Room

Accent walls are especially popular because it’s a way to add a colored wall to a room without having the color define the entire room. Painting an accent wall also save spending time and money repainting the room to update it with color. The best accent wall is one that reinforces a focal point in the room. A focal (or focus) point is an area of a room that catches your eye.

White is Not on the Color Wheel, but it’s Still a Color

Though white is not on the color wheel, when it’s used in home decor and interior design, white functions as a color, (which is as good as being a color). Here are some of my tips about using the wall paint color white: Mix up the sheens (texture). Layer whites from bright to creamy . . .

Can a Color Bring You Serenity?

Some interior designers and color forecasters are touting gray as the new “it” color — the color that is guaranteed to update your home. I’ve read pieces claiming that the color gray is calming and will soften the mood of any room. Don’t believe it.

Beware of Matchy Matchy

Have you seen the TV ads of homeowners bringing their lamps and teddy bears (or whatever) to the paint counter of a big box retailer? They look so relieved when the friendly paint store employee informs them that, “Yes, we can match this color!” They may be relieved at the paint counter, but that doesn’t always mean they’re going to love the paint color on the walls of their home. Matching paint colors to fabric and favorite object colors isn’t a fail-safe way to choose colors. Though looking for paint colors that exactly match a favorite object may seem like the best solution to finding the proper hue, the wall color may not look as good as you imagined when the paint is on the walls in the three dimensional space of your home.

Updating A Bathroom – Figure Out Your Design Concept

Remodeling advice can be confusing. Cristina Acosta gives you a tool to cut through advice overload to get what you want.

Positioning Makes Perfect

Color use is not a slam dunk. I see this with manufacturers who put a “Latin Color Palette” on a set of sheets or towels, slap a Spanish name on it and expect that they’ve done their part reaching the Latino market. This is especially annoying when the front person isn’t obviously Latino. A few years ago Sears and Ty Pennington did this with a design in his licensed signature line of bedding.

Getting Into Your Client’s Head – An article for Design Industry Professionals

Though we may have a good idea of what we like, getting into the heads of our clients and guiding them to know what they like is a bigger challenge. We are not privy to the experiences they have, and even if we were, the tendency within ourselves to relate to the client through our own story influences our perceptions. The way any of us respond to a color is the result of our experience, good or bad. Everything we see, hear, feel, smell and touch informs our color perceptions.

Colors Together Create a Melody Line

Have you ever found yourself looking at two or more house paint colors or other home decor colored items and been completely confused as to which paint color is the best choice? Cristina Acosta says that you need to be aware that every color in your home links to another color and is part of an overall melody line of color. Keep that concept in mind when you get stuck between two color choices.