News
New rules for painting to sell
From atmospheresinteriordesign.com [Link]
Color can be intensely personal and emotional. It can wake us up or calm us down, make us want to linger or send us running from a room. During the housing boom, buyers — and builders — chose colors and décor to help houses sell. Now that selling houses is a tougher proposition, interior designers say the best advice is to stick with neutral colors. But that doesn't mean painting the entire house off-white.
"We have redefined 'neutral' in the last 20 years," says color psychologist Rebecca Ewing, owner of Rebecca Ewing Color and Design in Decatur, Ga. "The neutrals that consumers respond to today are complex neutrals. I did a khaki wall that in the morning sun has a plum cast to it and in the evening has a gold cast. It isn't your mother's beige."
That's an understatement. Sage green is considered a neutral color now, says Cindi MacPherson, partner in The Interior Partners in Atlanta, Ga. "Shades of gray, brown and, of course, creams and off-whites are all in the neutral category now."
Real estate agents that San Francisco–based interior designer Cindy Young speaks with recommend "anything warm — tinted yellow, sage, even some of the tinted apricot on the terra cotta side — in the dining room, kitchen and public spaces." You could use light sage in the bedrooms and baths, but "nothing overwhelming," she says. "You can't put a ton of personality in the house because the buyers need to be able to see themselves in it."
Neutral doesn't mean that every room in the house has to be the same color, says Caralyn Goeldner, owner of Tribeca Design in Hermosa Beach, Calif. She suggests a consistent color scheme for connected public spaces, such as combination kitchens and great rooms. Use a richer version of the same color in the powder room and a different color for the bedrooms and baths. "It adds character and warmth to have different colors," Goeldner says. "Just keep it simple, nothing too off-the-wall. You want people to feel the warmth of the home."
For spaces that open to each other, Ewing says it's smart to use colors from the same family. It keeps the look consistent while giving it enough variation to keep it from feeling bland.
"I like to use a complex neutral color and draw on three or four or five values of it," she says. "I'll often use most of the color card, with the lightest color for the ceiling, the next lightest for the hallway and the next darkest below the chair rail in the dining room."
Since kitchens often sell a house, using a different color there from the rest of the house can help it to stand out from the competition.
That's where everybody hangs out," Ewing says. "It makes good sense to do something there to keep it from feeling antiseptic."
Plus, MacPherson notes, since the kitchen has several other elements that take up wall space —cabinets, appliances and backsplashes — there's not that much to paint. "It's nice to put a punch color in the house," she says. "It can become a memory point in an empty house."
And what about the often-overlooked fifth wall in a room, the ceiling? If the house has high ceilings or they're an important architectural detail, MacPherson says paint them a shade lighter or darker than the wall color to accent them. "If it's not an architectural detail," she says, "stick with ceiling white."
If there's one absolute, the designers say, it's to never paint an entire house white. It may be tempting because it looks clean or fresh, but it comes off feeling cold or sterile. Plus, it's tough to keep clean.
"I'm doing a house now that is white," Goeldner says. "They're finding it's a nightmare with kids. It's much better to have a neutral tan color. It's a lot warmer."
In an open floor plan, decorating is tall order
Amount of space, height of ceiling matter when picking furniture.
By Mary Booth Thomas
For the Journal-Constitution
Saturday, February 14, 2009 [Link]
To meet the demands of today’s home buyers, builders are creating homes with open floor plans that combine the kitchen, family room, breakfast room and sometimes the keeping room and formal dining space.
Homes with open floor plans are light, airy and give the illusion of space, even in relatively small homes.
They are great for entertaining, and they’re perfect for empty nesters who are downsizing but still need a big space to accommodate their larger pieces of furniture, said Cindy McPherson of Interior Partners and owner of a home with an open floor plan.
In fact, McPherson had no plans to buy a new house until she saw the open floor plan of an infill home in Dunwoody and fell in love.
“The home has about 1,200 square feet of open space, and it’s fabulous for entertaining and large enough to accommodate a crowd,” she said.
Open floor plans sometimes present a challenge to homeowners, who puzzle over how to determine where one space starts and another ends and how to make a huge open space feel cozy and warm.
Furniture placement is a good way to divide up a large open space, said Pam Slappey of MD Design Group.
She suggested using a large sofa as a divider and placing a sofa table behind it, then adding lamps or tall plants to create a visual barrier.
“Thanks to the popularity of open floor plans, furniture makers are designing pieces that are finished on both sides,” Slappey said.
She’s used inexpensive bookshelf units from Pier One and Target to divide a large open space.
“Bookcases can be filled with artwork and vases and fulfill functional and decorative uses at the same time,” Slappey said.
In large, high-end homes, she suggested choosing large, upscale furniture created for open floor plans, such as a 12-foot curved bookcase by Habersham Designs.
In a large space, create your main seating arrangement around a focal point, such as a fireplace or a television, suggested Mona Stephen, executive director of M-One Design Group.
Warm up the space by adding area rugs and pillows.
Create secondary conversation areas as well, such as placing a pair of chairs and an end table in a corner or in front of a window, Stephen added.
“When people have a party in a large space, the room should have different conversation areas so it doesn’t seem like everyone is in one big conference room,” she added.
In her large home, McPherson placed a baby grand piano between the breakfast area and the great room to define the two uses of the space.
Since her open space has hardwood floors throughout, McPherson used area rugs to define the space, placing a rug in the sitting area and another under the breakfast table.
Take into account the size of your space when you’re choosing furniture, Stephen suggests.
“The size of the furniture should be based on the size of the space and the height of the room,” she said.
McPherson chose large pieces to fit in with the scale of her large room with high ceilings. For instance, there’s a big plasma TV over the fireplace flanked by two tall urns.
“The urns are really large, but anything smaller would look silly,” she said.
If your ceiling is low, use tall lamps and accessories or hang the curtains all the way to the ceiling to give the illusion of a taller height, Stephen suggested.
To be on the cutting edge of design, choose a soft color palette for your open floor space and add color with furniture and accessories, rather than with an accent wall, Stephen suggested.
“Dark colors are definitely a thing of the past as of right now for open floor plans. Darker paint is fine in a closed-off space like a study, but in an open space, the colors should be light and airy and the trim should be all one color for continuity,” she said.
Do’s and don’ts for open floor plans
- Do choose furniture and accessories in scale with the size of the room. If the room is large with high ceilings, choose big, bold pieces that aren’t dwarfed by the space.
- Do use lighting to define the space. Hang a chandelier over the breakfast table, pendant lights over the breakfast bar in the kitchen and can lights or spots in the living area.
- Do use screens or panels to divide the space. Hang a decorative screen from the ceiling to create a visual barrier.
- Don’t use different colors to define the space unless there is a corner or an edge between the spaces. Having two different colors meet in the middle of a solid wall gives the area an inharmonious look.
- Don’t mix extreme styles of furniture, such as a starkly modern table in the dining area and an intricately carved Victorian highboy in the living room. Everything in an open space should blend together.
