apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I really want to paint one of my closets in a zebra stripe. Totally random and crazy. This has made me a little more motivated to do that. But taking all the stuff out of the closet to do so....NOT looking forward to that.

No. Please don't do this. My poor mother in Scranton, Pennsylvania read that idiot DV column and one day her sister came home to find my mother painting the bathroom bright purple because DV had said to do it. The family fight that resulted lasted for days (which is how I still know about it).

I like this. It just puts me in a better mood instantly. The best part is that because it is in the closet, it is a surprise. Anyone can paint a random wall in the living room and get credit for being creative but it takes a person who really understands the power of color to use it to give life to what is typically an uninspiring part of the home. Nice work.

Or hot pink! Yes. Maybe I'll do hot pink.

The risk of harm is very minimal in my case, esp. b/c of the low likelihood that I will actually move all the stuff out of my closets in order to be able to paint. :) So why not dream big? Velvet! I'll upholster the closets in velvet!

i think the examples listed here are dumb (um, maybe you shouldn't wash your child's hair in champagne because it will do nothing to actually clean your child's hair?). not to mention verging on offensive considering the time they were published (you know, the depression?).

but i love the bright green closet.

and i see nothing wrong with a bright purple bathroom.

ok, so I like the theory behind the 'paint the closet' sentiment. I can see how it might be really uplifting to get an unexpected jolt of color behind closed doors...

BUT, I advocate leaving the the walls of your closet (at least the one in which you keep clothes) white. Simply because any other colors is likely to influence how you interpret the hues of your clothing and would put you seriously at risk for horribly co-ordinated outfits. I guess that this might not be an issue for broom or linen closets, or even kitchen cabinets.

Champagne was supposed to bring out the blonde in blonde hair.

this is a great, fun idea! i would absolutely have a crazy colored closet if someone painted it FOR me. im just way too lazy.

if anyone wants to volunteer, i will even let you pick the color. lol

Oh, wow. We just painted our closet-sized bathroom the same colour this weekend. We used BM's Lizard Green, but it's equally Kermitty. Like the closet, it's a tiny space and it's the brightest colour in the apartment. It really transformed an awful room into what I can only describe as a private joke - I laugh a little every time that I open the door (in a good way). Thanks for validating our taste!

I think that this is a brilliant idea. I love it when people paint the backs of their shelves too. So designer.

This kind of green has been so popular lately. It's like the brighter more saturated cousin of the avocado green of the 1970s. I wonder how long it will take before this color fades from "hot" to "what were we thinking?" I love it when people have so much fun with color and do "crazy" things with color and decor because they love them. How else would we be able to enjoy our crazy antics on "I-love-the-2000s" on VH137 in 2018? This reminds me a lot of some of the interiors of old psychedelically color schemed Victorian/Edwardian flats in San Francisco.

i rent and i can't paint the walls in my place, so painting is not an option. sure, i could paint my closet green and then paint it white again when i move out but honestly it's too much time and effort for the year or two i will probably be here. so along the line of a "why don't you" section i'd love to see a special "just for renters" section here - just on an irregular basis.

I have large sets of bookshelves against the wall, and I've been thinking about using designer wallpaper for the backsplash, to peek out behind the books. But am not sure if it would just look busy, as the shelves are pretty packed.

But think it's a fun idea if you want to get fanciful wallpaper that you wouldn't actually want an entire wall of. Have also seen this done in Benjamin Moore's "stem green" in one of their paint magazines and that looked very nice against dark shelves

Alexandra Stoddard is a big fan of painting closet interiors in bright colors for a little jolt of surprise.

A former neighbor did his closet in David Hockney swimming pool blue, and he was still able to put together a matching outfit afterwards (though it clashed with his preferred clothing palette and would have looked better as a room in a grayer shade of blue).

Why don't I paint the closet bright green?
Because I've already covered it in needlepoint . . . ?

My friend did his closet deep murderous red, and it's gorgeous. And he did it years ago, no doubt DV influenced...

I've been painting the back of my closets and shelves deep dark red for a few years now and whenever someone comes over they get influenced to do the same ( 21 people and counting )! I Just moved into a new apt though and am thinking about doing it a bright turquoise...same idea...different color! It's details like that that seperate a house from a home and really bring some personality.

i think it's a great idea for at to do a variation on the vreeland column. of course dv's original also included the sublime to the ridiculous as an attention getter.
it would be great to have photo examples for each why don't you.
why don't you shampoo your carpets with champagne,

SJ Perelman wrote an excellent satirical take on "Why Don't You" which I think was published in the New Yorker. From Colm Toibin: "Satirists had a field day with her. S. J. Perelman took time to consider her suggestion about child care: ‘Why don't you rinse your blond child's hair in dead champagne as they do in France? Or pat her face gently with cream before she goes to bed, as they do in England?' Vreeland had written in all seriousness. Perelman concluded that he ‘slept across the foot of [his child's] crib with a loaded horse pistol until the next issue appeared.'"

"I, only I (here among us) have the right to die alone, in a Chinese-red opium den!" said D. Vreeland one day to her assembled staff...

THANK YOU MARK C.!
insert further Vreelandisms....

key lime pie green for my closet/office i've found, but finding the right ultra vivid lilac for a small entry floor is proving to be a challenge (bcuz the oil or acrylic colors available in small tubes for canvas aren't available in large cans...).

orange ed - your friendly neighborhood paint source should be able to color-match your preferred tube of vivid lilac. just bring a nice big sample in (maybe a square foot painted onto a drywall or masonite panel?) and any knowledgeable employee should be able to match it. good luck with your entryway!

I painted my bathroom a color very similar to that because it's so dark and dingy...it really livened things up!

opoponax--
I think you are pushing it by calling Ms. Vreeland a Depression-era writer when she started her Bazaar writings.

For the Vreeland fans, if you EVER get the chance to see Full Gallop, gallop, don't walk. HILARIOUS.

Or pick up "D.V." (Paperback) by Diana Vreeland, edited by George Plimpton and with a foreward by Mary Louise Wilson, who BRILLIANTLY brought this style icon to life in the almost one-woman Full Gallop when it played in New York.

1936 is most definitely the depression.

my grandparents in the rural south were eating ketchup soup (i.e. watered down ketchup heated up a bit on a wood stove) up through WW2. and every official historical account of that period seems to imply that the hard times lasted the duration of the 30's.

i'm not saying Diana Vreeland was, like, a bad person for writing that column, but i can see why she was so ridiculed for it.

either way, now that we're in more prosperous times, bring on the green closets!!

Not according to Wikpedia, but anywho.

I love this website, but my only question is - where do you people do all this stuff?

The majority of posters here have really beautifuly apartments and I couldnt imagine pushing the lounge furniture back against the wall and turning your living room into a workshop one weekend.. then back to the showroom living room come monday.

I never see paint on furniture/floors/curtains etc...

I've painted one of my closets a paler green than this. It looks really nice with the closet organizer we put in there. We'll do the 2nd one once we're not so lazy.

maybe i read a different wikipedia article, but when i ran 'great depression' through their search engine, what came up said "most of the 30's" and then went on to describe economic, social, and political events up through 1939. the article also mentions that the depression ended through the production increases made necessary by WW2, which did not start in the US until the end of 1941.

but anywho.

Yes, we read a different article (again).

Just painted my entryway pea-green. Hope DV would approve. Or is it not enough of a statement? Lime would have clashed with the avocado kitchen.

I believe the greens we are seeing now will look like the salmon colors of the 1980s in a few years -- or months.

This lady seems to like her closet like this, which is the ONLY reason to use these colors. Else, I'd steer clear of these fads and seek out color schemes that will stand the test of time.

I prefer to paint the insides of kitchen cabinets, since there's less junk to move out of the way!


As for the Depression, the national economy finally began expanding again in 1938; still, many people see the beginning of WWII as the end (but because of the focus on the war effort, private investment and real consumption by average citizens actually tanked--and didn't recover nicely until 1946). So, WWII recreated the sense that a good economy was possible.... (I really need to shut up now and go back to thinking about cabinets!!)

"i think the examples listed here are dumb (um, maybe you shouldn't wash your child's hair in champagne because it will do nothing to actually clean your child's hair?). not to mention verging on offensive considering the time they were published (you know, the depression?)."

The whole point is that when times are really bad you have to dream even further - reading about how awful everything is isn't going to motivate people to carry on - you need to dream big dreams and thus gain hope that in the future those dreams will happen - she provided some of those big dreams

"ketchup soup"

they had the money to buy ketchup but not any other food????

People read DV's column for the same reason people went to the movies - to escape the harsh realities of depression, war, etc. All meant to be taken with a grain of salt.

Re the ketchup comment - during the depression people went to Automats, put ketchup in hot water and had tomato soup.

i like the kitchen cabinet idea-- i'm not brave enough yet to paint the walls of my kitchen a bright color, but i like the idea of doing the insides of kitchen cabinets.

do you paint just the back wall part, or the whole inside (including back of the door?)

When I was child in Paris (parents American), my mother painted the ceiling of my white room chocolate brown as well as the inside of all my bookcases. It left a lasting sense of how a room's volume and feeling could be affected. She painted not only the ceiling of the very, very long, narrow hallway but several feet down onto the walls an "almost black" with a great deal of deep red in it to create the illusion of a wider hallway. She left the wallpaper that existed already in the living room: huge leaves in shades of black-gray-green on a burnt orange backrgound. Curtains: indian yellow-orange silk.

Don't know if she read DV, but they had kindred spirits.

PS My hair got rinsed with lemon juice. My mother set her hair with beer. Another theme here? Hair cocktails?

I'm surprised by how much I like this closet and color. I love using color in my own apartment, but so far I've stuck to dove grays and paperbag browns and lemony yellows (not all in the same apartment, mind you). I've always wanted to try brighter colors, but using them in my living room, say, frightens me. But perhaps I could test it out in the closet and see how it goes.

AW, your brown-ceilinged bedroom reminds me on my own childhood bedroom. When my family moved into a Victorian house, my mom wouldn't let me remove the pale green toile wallpaper in my bedroom, but she did let me paint the ceiling any color I wanted. I went with Pepto-Bismol pink, and it kinda worked. Looking up at that pink ceiling every night made me very happy.

I'm all for color in unexpected places.

My parents' bedroom was painted this color in the 1970s. We christened the shade "J__ Ch___ Green" in honor of my grandmother's (god rest her salty-mouthed soul!) reaction upon seeing it.

OK - I'm entirely too jealous of a person who can manage to put an etagere-like thing in a closet and only have one sinlge item per shelf. I hate him/her!

Love the color - love the idea - a fun project for the winter???

Closet painting! Something the kids could do, too! After all - who will REALLY see it exepct for immediate family!

I remember moving into a new house as a child and my parents painted my new closet shocking purple. (Probably as a compromise to painting the whole room that color only to have to re-do in a year.) My wonderful step-grandmother bought me these fancy purple hangers to go with it. I would sit in that closet when I wanted to get away; it was awesome.

My closets, which are boring white, tend to scuff up from hangers (and boxes/bins in the guest room closet).

I've been thinking of painting them in a scrubbable gloss, but will probably go with pink or red.

lw--I like backs only, and not doors. Anyone else?