apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I've been thinking about how cool colors would work with the very warm colors I already have in place.

For example, a blue painted floor.
Not interested in its proximity to red turning it purple . . .
not totally unhappy with the idea of looking like jewelry from Tibet, coral and turquoise. Proceeding carefully.

Help! There's no option for wanting to stick with about the same amount of color. Our apartment would be vastly improved if we owned it and could paint the walls beige, to "knock back" the larger pieces of furniture and set off the elaborate white molding. The net result would be very little added color, but the existing colors would blend together more harmoniously, and the whole look would be crisper.

We bought our paint at Marston & Langinger in Soho. Their paint normally goes for $95 and we got it on sale in the summer for right around $25 per gallon (or 4 litre)! We were lucky. They have very dreamy, subtle, colors. We painted the living room swedish grey, which has a turquoisey/gray, soft/light look. The idea was that artwork could do the talking in terms of color in the rooms. Ceiling/ceiling beams/moldings are painted white. Furnishings will be very subtle, in that same color family, art and accessories will be colorful.

That was for the living room. For the bedroom, we used a soft sagey color. At first I thought it looked a bit strange to have these two colors next to each other, but, they are both soft, so I guess it's fine. I simply wanted to use more than one color on the walls in the apt. so that's what I did without much thought. I just figured I'd tie it in somehow down the road!

wende
can't you paint your place if you paint it back to white before you leave? I am always inspired by an Italian woman I once worked with who would rage into an apartment for the first week, to paint and fix even if she was only going to be there six months.

susiq
Marston & Langinger...jealous about that sale paint...

Guido -- I'm trying to get up my nerve to ask permission. We live in the equivalent of Hell's Kitchen, where tenants are the enemy, and I've already taken advantage of our pseudo-yuppie aren't-we-GOOD-tenants status to get new faucets.

It's very tempting to do the foyer in three shades of off-white and see if anyone notices.

guido, they are at 117 mercer street, 212.575.0554 and who knows, maybe they still have a sale on...something about the paint cans with the old labels on them. But, if they try to tell you that one coat will cover no prob, just grin.....ain't no way.

Oh, my mess is almost all cool colors, with the exception of a couple of flashes of red, and a very juicy warm green. I like bright colors on white with black accents. Crisp, bright, a little eccentric, a little Mondrian. The bathroom has accessories in light blue, lime green, and a medium dusty purple, though.

I want more colors... the original plan upon moving in was to paint the wall behind my bed red, but it was against the lease, and we already had so many exceptions that I didn't want to push it. So I wound up putting a giant poster of Hokusai's "The Great Wave Off Kanagawa" up behind the bed. I probably won't use it in the next apartment - it's blown up far past the size of the original, so it's not crisp, and it's a poster, so it's not very mature. What I will probably do is get a large canvas, grid it out, and paint something very similar with sharper lines. I expect it to take quite some time, though; there's also the problem of keeping the fiance from painting Godzilla into it. ;)

I really hate all the white walls in this place, and when I move into the next place in the coming year, I WILL be doing something else about the walls... probably painting and then immediately setting aside the money to repaint.