apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I love the idea of testing ideas out in a space like that.

What a fun idea!

Interesting idea, and it's great that you have a space to play with like that. Yellow can be difficult - I painted my apartment yellow (hallways and living room) when I moved in and, as you mention, the interesting thing is that the color seems really different depending on the light coming in. At night it is very saturated even though it seems fairly pale in the day time. I love it, but after 3 years, it's really wearing on me, and now I'm getting ready for a do-over!

What a charming, happy place!

that is a lot of yellow. I like 319 better as well.

Fantastic!!

One thing to keep in mind is that the success of the room largely depends on the other rooms from which one enters the dining room... Notice Mone's other room is blue- or at least achieves a cool blue by virtue of exploiting the light...

I like the moodier, dustier 319.
I want to experiment with my place.

Wonder how Monet would have fared with our critics had he entered the "I Got Color!" or "Smallest, Coolest" contest?!

Ha! I offer my support of Greg & Em as evidence that I'm not just sucking up to Maxwell on this one.

But good point.

Oh just go for it--2022-40!!

I love the idea of a lab. Esp. since you don't have to live there day in and day out.

I gotta say, not feeling 319. It feels like chickening out. 321 seems closer to the color on the china (at least on my monitor) and a more powerful yellow. DO IT DO IT DO IT Don't make me get out the Benjamin Moore fanbook, because I will.

This pic made my heart jump! Love this house! It inspired us to paint our diningroom bright yellow (using one of Martha's kmart paint pallettes) a few years ago. The room changes beautifully throughout the day - and you can change the look so easily going from blue china plates, or blue prints to black and white photos in thin black frames - I hope you will post photos - would like to see more cottage looks/examples. O, and Monet's bright green spinach layer cake!

Julian is right, that you need to take into account the surrounding rooms. Incompatible colors can make it look cheap.

I have found that Benjamin Moore's classic colors are easier to work with in a home with a vintage feel. The rest of their colors often tend toward a chemical brightness (often, an acidity) or pastel dilution that I don't like, while the classics are more organic (and paints from Monet's time were made from minerals and plant dyes, so this is "correct") and saturated...even the paler ones.

I had a heck of a time nailing a yellow for my kitchen a few years ago, and I finally settled on an exterior color that matched some old Bauer wear (sorry, I've forgotten what color it was, but it's that cadmium yellow with an undertone of orange-gold)), which I had mixed to order for interior paint. Exterior colors tend to be more opaque,more saturated, and more toward the organic colors, than do the interior.

Quite often, I take out my artist's oil paint and mix up a color I like, and have it color matched. You can also have a plate color matched. The Benjamin Moore stores usually have someone that can match by eye. Computer matching is inexact.

Funny thing...I went through gallons of color samples for my living room (wanted a sort of yellow ochre), and finally mixed one with my oil paints and had it matched. Later on, I was going through my BM color pack, and there was my color...as exact as could be.

My friend, who is an interior designer, said that yellow is one of the most difficult shades to get right. For the average person (a.k.a. with more modest ambitions than the Monet-inspired dining room), it's hard to choose a yellow that won't be too bright or primary on the wall.

I don't feel personally drawn to yellow walls, though I'm not quite sure why. I am scared by Maxwell's pronouncement that the pale Martha Stewart colours are going out of style! I like bright colours in theory and as accents, but for livability I just love the sage greens, watery aquas, and blue-greys ...

Oops! I meant Bejamin Moore Historic colors, not Classic colors! Maybe what I said will make more sense now. Maybe not.

Pale walls may or may not be going out of style, but it remains true that saturated color scares a lot of people. Too much commitment. It's hard to do effectively, too. An entirely yellow room can look lurid (think Van Gogh's sanitorium period). A room with very dark walls can just look dead. You have to balance it out. To a certain degree, a Provencal yellow/blue room rests even more on the choice of blue than the yellow. It can look soft, rich and inviting, or bright and hard like an Ikea sign.

I'm sorry, but that all-yellow is just hideous. It may be my computer monitor, but its just too much for me. Best of luck with this experiment, though.

Question: would an all-yellow cottage be a turn-on or turn-off for renters?

Also, I find this all-yellow thing a weird turn from the usually pro-modern vibe going on at AT. Huh.

What bugs me about the Monet house is that it looks like somebody took a paint sprayer and sprayed the entire room with everything but the accessories in place.

It's what I most often dislike about shows like Trading Spaces and Design on a Dime... the "one paint can" effect. But this is even more extreme.

But, can I say how jealous I am that you have a "living lab" to play with...! Paint me bright green!

Pat - you nailed it, saturated colour is too much of a commitment for me. I could probably commit to a bright or rich accent wall (and I currently have bright-turquoise chairs in my kitchen) but I can't see myself feeling comfortable in a room that was really bright or really dark.

Huh. Now Pat has me all worried. I was going to go with BM Hawthorne Yellow for my living room. Am I going to end up chopping off my ear?!

My feeling is if you're going yellow - go all the way and pick the boldest one. Ordinarily I wouldn't take this position but there's so much of it that wimping out would be worse than over the top. What I think will make the difference is the details and the shades of blue as accents. Cool blues with a hot yellow. And, of course, lighting is everything.

Clicking on Mark Chamberlin's link brings up an old post from P(too) form 12/14/04. Was his question as to the name of the blue ever answered? What an incredible blue paint this is. And the painter's work is quite impressive. I love this blue.

That is indeed a beautiful blue.

I have a little long island house too and we painted the dining room yellow a few years ago - with white wainscotting, ceiling and trim. a bit deeper and brighter than your yellow if the pictures are true. sunny in summer, warm in winter. maybe since halfway up the wall is not yellow the colour is not overwhelming.

Farrow and Ball has the best deep yellows, hands down. I have a room painted "Yellow Ground" and no one ever wants to leave it.

I'm NOT a colorist. So beware of what I write here. All of you have much better senses of color than I.

Nonetheless, here is my two cents.

Yellow in France will be different that yellow here because of the quality of the light.

I am from Mexico. We think nothing of using hot pink, deep purple, shocking blue, and so on, IN OUR LATITUDE. Yet some of the things I've brought here look garish because the light is different. So, methinks it will be difficult to replicate the French yellow here, though you may come close in achieving a similar feeling.


2. QUESTION ABOUT YELLOW:

I love it, but it's such a difficult color. I tried many, many shades in my living room, to no avail. Finally, someone told me that a room has to have ample natural light if one wants to use yellow. Is that true?

love love love it. Maybe it's my white trash Texas roots creepin in, but it makes crave banana puddin' with 'nilla wafers. Please tell me there's going to be a painted china cabinet to go along with it. That makes it.

Also, the big white table cloth and white on the ceiling keeps it grounded for me.

And P2, I disagree. It doesn't look crappy, DIY, all-in-one-day makeover show at all. Maybe it's because the art is lovely (& elegantly arranged) and the furniture doesn't look like it was'drunken-spray-painted' and put together with pop cicle sticks.

I'm not sure about painting the chairs, though. That's where it gets a little 'garanimals' for me.

Seems pretty dreamy overall. Post when you're done!

An illicit Monet dining-room photo on Flickr gives an interesting perspective on the use of the two yellows: http://tinyurl.com/occke

What a lovely house! While I love the *idea* of yellow, I find it hard to live with anything but a pale yellow. Perhaps I am still scarred by my extremely yellow childhood kitchen. I have to say that I love those china cabinets.

I'm sorry, the yellow on yellow is horrifying. It's like some sickening blinding garish 1977 grandma dining room. yellow walls and white trim would be much a much more appealing look and combination.

I'm curious about the Farrow & Ball paint Megan mentioned. On screen, Yellow Ground looks a lot like BJ Hawthorne Yellow. I'm wondering what it is about Farrow & Ball that would be worth shelling out $10 for the sample.

I used the F & B yellow ground in a guest room on the garden floor of a brownstone. As the room only gets direct sunlight in the morning--and only a minimal amount of natural light the rest of the day--I wanted something warm and rich and fairly intense. (Also, there's a fireplace of dark plum marble in the room--yellow seemed like a natural choice). I picked out the yellow without even sampling it; I've had terrific results from F & B in the past (my experiences with B. Moore were that the colors looked too lurid once up on the wall, artificially bright somehow). My advice would be, whatever brand you go with, to avoid choosing a yellow that in any way resembles the light, sunny yellow that was so popular in for sunrooms and kitchens in the 90s.

I LOVE yellow, but that particular shade of yellow doesn't do it for me at all. It's too lemony in tone, almost has a green tinge to it. I find that rooms painted in a parchment white color *look* yellow with light coming through the windows. I definitely prefer yellow toward the more gold/tea-stained end of the spectrum.

But the idea of coloring a whole room like that is cool.

Megan,

Thank you for your very helpful response. I'm going to try it.

(Dark plum marble--how divine!)

Be careful with BM Hawthorne Yellow (I've tried it). It doesn't "sit" on the wall, but goes all bright/pastel on you. At least in my home. Somthing's wrong with that color, I think. Not enough deep pigment maybe? It's almost there, but...

Whoever said that many BM colors are often artificially bright on the wall is right. That's why I stick largely with the Historic ones. Chesterton Buff and Dorset Gold are two good ochre-yellow and gold colors that don't go muddy or acid or milky (or garish). But they aren't what's wanted for this room.

Personally, I find the yellows in this LI house too "Easter-egg" to be correct for Monet's time. There's too much white in the wall color, to start. The trim is too acid. The undertone for both should be more orange-gold, like a cadmium yellow, or even toward saffron. The chairs would look more appropriate (or at least softer)if some of the paint was sanded off and a dark wax applied. Pehaps a glaze on the walls could achieve this, too. This room lacks a...glow.

It's correct that natural light is everything in a room. There's a reason that Provencal and Tuscan colors look nice in a home in, say, Napa Valley, CA, and just wrong in Maine. I paint large patches of color on all four walls of a room, and look at them in daylight, lamplight, and at different times of the day. NYC light is pretty harsh, so it's very likely that all this yellow is going to hit you in the eye in LI. Yellow in New England was traditionally paired with creamy-white trim. Again, probably for a reason.

I'm wondering if a house used as a style lab beomes a business expense (?).

Did you guys see Amber's yellow kitchen (linked in her flickr collection in the cure thread?)

It looks great. It's a really bright yellow, but with black and white accents.

It's like Pat naturally sees what we farm animals must take mind-enhancing drugs to experience (Fed Lurkers: from what I read in Literature). What a stroke of luck this thread is for me.

Thanks again, ladies.

not sure, pat, but I think those photos with the yellow chairs *are* monet's house. of course, the color is mediated by a digital camera and a computer monitor, so who knows what the original looks like.
I find the color in the first photo a bit chalky for my taste--the one further down, of the same room, is more appealing.

Yes, the photos with the yellow chairs are of Monet's house. You could be forgiven for thinking otherwise, though--the presentation is a bit confusing.

I notice that you have used a picture of Monet dinnerware from one of my sites - which is not a problem at all. Thanks for the reference

You may be interested to know that the actual Monet dinnerware was designed by Monet for his own use in his house at Giverny. Monet painted a simple white plate by hand with a blue edge and a yellow rim. The original design was made by the now extinct companies of Godin and Arhendfeld

In 1978, Mr Van der Kempf, curator of the Foundation Claude Monet, requested that Robert Haviland & C. Parlon recreate, from some pieces of the original dinner set that had been found in the attic of Monet's house in Giverny, a dinner service true to its original shape, pattern, and colors. The dinner service usually associated with Monet's dining room is another original design by Monet called Cerisiers de Monet which is in blue, white, and celadon.

I note your problems obtaining the correct color mix - one of the areas of skill in the manufacturing process is maintaining the same continuity of color tone over the years.

I have an open concept house that's decorated in the French country style. I painted my walls Benjamin Moore's Chestertown Buff 8 years ago and have never regretted it. The colour changes from a vibrant yellow in the morning to a soft buff in the evening. I'm gearing up to paint my walls again... using the same colour!

e decided to go with a stronger hue in our home office and used Dorset Gold. Another winner.