Traveling to Germany and not knowing German, I wondered how easy it would be to read the signs and get around. I laughed when I saw this sign my first day in Heidenheim, Germany. The language of color spoken internationally! Photo credit: ©Cristina Acosta

Color communicates. Any color expert, designer or artist will agree with that statement. But ask those creative types what exactly a color is communicating and the answers you get may have surprisingly little in common.

Here’s why: Color is a language that continually evolves with the cultures that contribute the shades and tones of meaning each of us sees. And, each individual brings their personal biases and perceptions to the mix, further complicating things.

Yes, you can open most any home decor magazine and read at least one color experts’ opinion based on a study about the calming effects of green – or beige – or . . . whatever the next color may be. But the truth is, the focus group that decides green is calming one year, may decide that mauve is calming next year. And, one more thing to keep in mind,  the experience of an individual and the particular mix of individuals in a focus group is always changing.

Consequently, the meaning of a color is a moving target. One person’s irritating red is another person’s energizing red. It’s all about time and place, people and perception.

So what do you do with this information when you’re standing in the paint store looking for an idea or some advice? Here’s a few tips:

• The first thing to do is to choose a group of colors you love that you think might work for the project. For example – If you’re choosing exterior home colors and are looking for 3 colors, pick at least a dozen that you think will work.

• Then (ideally, take some time with this step) clip the color samples into individual pieces and spread them on the table. Start choosing your favorites.

• When you’ve narrowed it down to at least 4 choices, THEN start choosing where the colors go. Such as this color for the body, this for the trim, this for the gable trim, etc.

Remember that when you are choosing colors, you are bringing a lifetime of experience to the process. Respect that first with a little exploration, then listen to the advice you get from friends and professionals. You’ll have a better feel for the color choices that are right for you.

www.CristinaAcosta.com

Walking through the streets of Bordeaux, France I saw these beautiful faded purple doors. Against the grays and browns of the buildings and the weather that day, the violet color brought a subtle and rich dimension to the street view. Photo: Cristina Acosta

Inspired by the colors in the landscape of urban city streets I've been exploring the colors by painting textiles. The sheer matte quality of the silk is the perfect substrate to convey the feeling of the colors from the street in Bordeaux, France. My intent was not to replicate the colors visually as much as to convey the sensations I received while walking through the colors in that landscape. Photo credit: Cristina Acosta

I’ve been thinking a lot about color and culture, and have been exploring that theme in my fine art for many years.

The landscape around us effects how we perceive color. The geography of a place along with the cycle of seasons as well as the weather and light  combine with the presence or absence of human culture to create the colors of a place.

In my  paintings and drawings other concerns (like image or texture) overtake this concept, so I decided to work with these color ideas in textiles.

Painting silk scarves for myself or friends is a relaxing way for me to play with color stories.  (And I have something fun to wear when I’m done!) This week I painted this silk scarf directly from the inspiration of some recent travels. I’ve been fortunate to be able to travel with my teenage daughter, Isabella Barna during her fencing competition season. She competed in a few fencing World Cups, so we both enjoyed traveling to both small and large towns in Europe for the events.

The many changes in landscape I’ve experienced this year contrast in my mind, mixing with the sensations of place. Each memory has a different palette of colors and values. Playing with these memories and translating them to visual ideas allows me to re-live the sensations of the memories as I create visual structure around them. It’s sort of like selecting photos for a scrapbook page, I select among the thoughts and feelings of memory for the creative expression.

www.CristinaAcosta.com

The warm pink wall paint color ties together the variety of pinks in the marble and metallic cabinet faces. Wall paint color: Benjamin Moore - Lake House 1175. (Note: this color works beautifully in this particular light and architectural setting - please test it carefully before using it in your home). Photo Credit - Paula Watts

Mixing metallics into your home design can give a small space a stylish vibe. Put the metallic accents on existing cabinetry and your small space can remain clear and uncluttered – both practically and visually. And when those metallics come in a coppery pink tone, the result is gorgeous!

Metallic finishes can play up modern architecture like this master bath at the same time they link traditional materials like marble with the contemporary shapes of the home design.

The perfect wall paint color brings together the variety of surfaces with a unified color. With that in mind, choosing the color that works with every color in the bathroom is very important. Helping my clients choose the best color for the room meant first determining a few basic concepts. Here’s a list of things I consider and the thought process I went through to arrive at my choice that may help you:

• Should the color function as a warm color or a cool color?

Pink is usually perceived as a cool color. But in this instance, it was important that the pink be perceived as a warm color. By choosing a very warm pink with yellow and earth undertones the pink copper cabinet facing and the warm pink and brownish tones in the marble were “pushed” to the warm side of perception.

• What is the percentage of warm to cool tones in the space?

The warm white of the marble is “pushed” to function as a cool accent color against the warm tones of earthy pink. The cool tone is about 20% of the total color plan. This is a good balance as one color temperature being dominant strengthens the overall design.

Choosing wall paint colors can be complicated. Remember to consider basic concepts like overall color temperature and you’ll be able to make an informed color choice.  If it’s too much for you, give me a call.

www.CristinaAcosta.com

Thank you Paula Watts for your beautiful photo.

The yellow loft roofs the dining area and juts into the space of the living room of this home. The shape as well as the color act as a bridge between the red dining room walls and the green living room walls.

One thing leads to another. That’s as true in life as it is for interior design. It’s especially true if you’ve ever started remodeling or redecorating just one room of a home, then stood back when it was done only to realize that other areas of the house need updating.

And in the same sense, one color leads to another as you walk through any building. Creating a paint color scheme blending good color design with the architecture of your home is like putting together a 3-D puzzle. One part of that puzzle changes and everything changes. And change can be complicated.

It’s easy to think about home color as mostly about the walls, but the reality is that the walls, floors, ceiling, trims and decor are all design elements that combine within the open spaces of the home. Now add to that the thousands of choices you have in most any tile, furniture, lighting and paint store and the puzzle pieces of design that seemed so easy to sort are now in danger of becoming a pile of confusing shapes and colors.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by color, you’re not alone. Putting together entire interior design color schemes can be a lot to think about. But, mixing colors around your home gets a little simpler if you think about those color combinations as a master color plan.

Creating a master color plan is what I do for my clients. They choose the paint colors they like and I help them make those choices (or similar choices) work with the rest of their home decor as well as the architecture of the home.

Here are a few tips I share with color consulting clients to help them organize their interior paint colors:

• Identify the colors in your home that you aren’t going to change, such as the flooring, kitchen cabinetry, window coverings, countertops, etc., and be sure that the paint colors you choose complement the colors of those things.
• Look at the paint colors in natural light and at night under artificial light to be sure the color looks good 24/7.
• Sample your color choices in several places of the room so that you can see the effect of light on the paint color.

www.CristinaAcosta.com

The gold paint color reminds me of the sand of the beach near my childhood home. The addition of blue and green create a graphic triad of landscape colors in this stairwell area.

Visualize “fire engine red” and the color red rushes to mind with or without a vision of the wheels. It’s the same for “grass green”, “sky blue” or “chocolate brown”. Seeing color is such a natural condition that we often don’t question why we see colors and we presume that everybody sees the same colors.

Though most of us do see the same colors, some people can’t. Men (about 5-8% and about 1% in women) with congenital color-blindness may not even know the exact extent of their color blindness until professionally tested. And seeing the same colors is no guarantee towards agreement.

When I was a painting student in art school my professor asked me to randomly choose “Coca-Cola red” from a group of red color chips. I confidently picked a red, sure that it matched my memory of the color. When the professor produced a bottle of Coke and had me put my sample up to the logo, I was surprised to find my choice, though close, was not completely accurate.

Since then, decades of working with color and honing my color sense have increased my understanding of how precise the eye can be. For years I’ve mixed color as an artist, continually refining my experience with both the components of a color and how it appears next to other colors. I’ve also realized that my memories of  colors are only broadly accurate.

The color of the beach sand near my childhood home in Playa del Rey, California, is golder to me in my memories than the actual vial of sand from that beach that I collected for a keepsake. That’s because the expanse of sand and the light of the day make the color experience.

So, when I incorporated the gold of the sand into my home interior design color plan I went with the color that best bridged my color memories, the vial of beach sand  and the reality of my living room walls. I compromised between the color I held in my mind and what my  brain and eyes were telling me.

Learning about the neuroscience behind how the brain and the eyes  see color is the topic of Mark Changizi’s book,  The Vision Revolution. It’s a wonderful book from a man who describes himself as a  “theoretical neuroscientist”. Even if your interest in color is currently limited to what color to paint your living room accent wall, you’ll find that Changizi’s book will inform and enlighten your understanding of how the mind works and that how you physiologically perceive color affects your entire life.

www.CristinaAcosta.com Note: I have an affiliate arrangement with Amazon.com. Clicking on the icon for Changizi’s book and purchasing it through this link will result in a small financial support of this blog.

White comes in many colors from warm beige whites to cool blue whites.

Crisp and fresh or harsh and sterile, a laundry line of contradictory meanings flap around the color white. How we understand color is based on who and where we are. And the meaning color has for us can change along with changes in our lives and our location. White on a tropical island is a very different experience from  white (as snow) covering a northern winter landscape.

I was looking at the color white  last week and realized that for me, white had became a symbol of global interconnection. How did a color I see every day suddenly have a new meaning? Here’s what happened.

Last week an early season snow of over 5 inches fell around my home in Oregon. As the snow piled up (and the shock wore off!) I noticed a strange thing about the color of the snow. It was tinged a warm white. At first the warm white color of the snow wasn’t noticeable, but as the layer of stained snow thickened, it was obvious that something unusual had happened.

Poking my fingers into the top layer of snow, I could remove that soil tinged beige layer of snow to reveal the cold blue-white layer of snow beneath that had fallen earlier as part of the same storm. It was a beautiful contrast of whites.

The next day the news reported that a dust storm in the neighboring state of Washington near Moses Lake over 300 miles away from my  home in Bend, Oregon had tinged the snowfall with the warm red topsoil from Eastern Washington farm lands.

Mother Nature was giving us a lesson in whites along with a reminder that the borders we humans put around our cities, states, territories and countries are invisible to her. During those moments I spent looking at the subtly colored layers of white snow, white became my new “green”.

The idea of white as a unifying color isn’t new. The color white is regularly used in home decor as an interior or exterior paint trim color that repeats often enough around a home that it unifies a variety of other colors. White is so popular in architecture that some paint companies such as Benjamin Moore, Pittsburgh Paints and Sherwin Williams have over one hundred whites in their paint lines to choose from.

White is everywhere from underwear to outerwear. It’s in most everybody’s closet and has been for decades. White dress shirts have been a mainstay of men’s business fashion for over a century. From baby diapers to bed sheets, the color white in some variation is one color I would bet most people on the planet have. Billions of people and the color white. The meanings will keep on.

www.CristinaAcosta.com

Best Ever You magazine has invited me to be their Paint and Color Expert. The editor, Elizabeth Hamilton-Guarino along with her team has put together an anomaly in the current publishing business climate; a successful and growing magazine. Kudos to the staff at Best Ever You!

Readers are encouraged to send in their color and paint questions. Though  I’m not able to answer questions individually, I will  include design and color solutions in my monthly column whenever possible.

I look forwards to working with Best Ever You. Check out the on-line magazine, you’ll be sure to find something that inspires, informs or entertains.

www.CristinaAcosta.com

Contemporary home with ho-hum exterior colors

Contemporary Architecture New Color Plan with Addition of Gray & Blue over the Yellow

Are you ready for a home makeover but you don’t want to break the bank? 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.

The clients who built this contemporary residence engaged the architecture firm, Rainbow Valley in Oregon. The house, edged on one side with a grove of Oregon Oaks is a beautiful interplay of warmth and light that rests lightly on this hilltop in a Western Oregon Valley. The homeowners chose colors for the home under the duress of the final push before the home was completed. Though they liked the colors, they felt that something was not quite right. After they’d moved in and had a chance to live with their new home, they hired me to help them create a new color plan.

I asked my clients what they liked and didn’t like about the colors and listened to their answers as I looked at the intersecting shapes of the contemporary architecture.  Together we put together a color palette or plan that accentuated the lyrical aspects of the architecture while bringing more of the landscape colors into the mix.

Walking around the home I noticed how well the house integrated with the lot and the surrounding nature. Despite the often overcast skies in the area, subtle color was present everywhere. The beautiful gray trunks of the grove of Oregon Oaks, the many shades of green ranging from brilliant emerald to gray green changed under the movements of the cloud cover. Occasionally the clouds parted to reveal small patches of blue sky.

Keeping the existing green body color and the taupe trim color, we added a gray and a light blue to the exterior color story. Those two colors eliminated the existing yellow paint. With the yellow gone, the green appeared more vibrant. Adding the light blue color to the small front structure was the final touch that gave the front of the home a light-hearted lift.

Choosing colors for a home or business is more than just a few samples of  colors that “look good.” The best color plan is one that enhances the building, the surroundings and the lives of the people that live and work there.

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www.CristinaAcosta.com

For color consulting, contact me for both remote and in-person consults.

Yes, it is possible to use gray in such a way that it does create an inviting and serene interior design color palette. And yes, the color grey can meld well with other tones (remember the famous 80′s mauve and gray combo)? I have created many color plans for color consulting clients using gray and the result for them was beautiful. The key concept is “for them”.

Gray may not be your serene and calming color. In fact — if the color gray is all wrong for you, you’ll find yourself dissatisfied, depressed and unhappy with any walls you paint the color grey. You’ll hate it. So much for serenity.

Any of the national paint companies offer thousands of colors. In the Sherwin Williams line there are over 200 colors of green. In the Benjamin Moore line, there are over 400 colors of green. As for the color gray, if you include brown-grays, taupe-grays, green-grays, yellow-grays, dark grays and light grays, you’re going to find hundreds of potential colors that could be considered “gray” in one trip to the paint aisle of any paint store.

Colors shape the mood of any environment, and there are many books and studies written about the effect of color. If you’re interested, I encourage you to read everything you can about color. But if you’re going to paint a room in your house, put aside those books and think about how color effects you (and the others in your home).

If you can’t get out of your head to what a color really feels like for you, take some time to notice color during the next couple of days. Take a few notes or some quick cell phone photos of what interests you. Don’t second-guess or edit your impulse to note a color. Look at your favorite clothes and ask yourself if the color could possibly work in your home.

When you’ve found the colors that work for you — then you can fine tune them at the paint store and not get yourself confused with the latest fashion trend.

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www.CristinaAcosta.com Call me to schedule a color consulting appointment in Bend, Oregon or a phone appointment if you don’t live in Oregon.
Read more of my Choosing Colors blog entries.