We love the bright jolt of orange paired with more muted colors. But what happens when you tone down the orange, too? Pairing a burnt, rusty hue with other muted colors gives you results that are somber but beautiful.
Burnt orange with grays or browns seems suited to the season, with leaves rustling underfoot and gray skies above. Let's take a look at a few rooms using orange in a moody way:
• 1 Katie Lee Joel's living room mixes burnt orange with soft grays and blues, via Decor Pad.
• 2 The burnt orange chair is the highlight here along with those aqua blue curtains in this dark wood paneled room from Elle Decor.
• 3 Here, burnt orange is the main color of the room, but its darkened tone grouped with golds, ivory, and natural wood keeps things mellow.
• 4 Here, we see burnt orange works well with an almost-black-eggplant ground and lightest violet, via the iVillage Garden Web forum (original source unknown).
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Comments (15)
So funny, I'm not an orange person at all, but I enjoy all the sophisticated uses of burnt orange that I'm seeing lately. It can scream retro when paired with chartreuse and golds, but I love it paired with silvery gray blues and ivories as in the first picture.
I have a "Danish Modern" chair in the same pumpkin-orange color as that Pappa Bear chair in pic #2 along w/ a vintage orange table lamp - I love the way they appear in my Brown and White living room.
OOh I do love the orange against the eggplant in the last photo. Makes me think I should get some orange accents for my kitchen.
That's a fantastic collection of rooms- so luxurious.
I prefer the burnt orange in small doses, as these images show, it's perfect for a plush side chair. Something about that color makes the velvet LOOK softer.
Glad to see this post! I just picked up a vintage burnt orange velvet sofa and loveseat on Monday and I've been trying to figure out how to tone down the retro just a bit. This is one of my favorite colors though, so it's a welcome challenge.
LeahDC I am saying the same thing as you.
I do not like the furniture combo in the second picture, I like most of the pieces just not together in this way, but the color combo is gorgeous- wood paneling, that blue, the orange, that bit of green and gold is so great.
wonderful colors.
Where I live, decorating your house with a lot of burnt orange is known as "being a Texas fan." :D
Agh. Burnt orange here and olive-green in another post. The '70s are all around. Hold me.
Nothing wrong w/the color per se, but otherwise these rooms are devoid of interest, IMO.
Nothing wrong w/the color per se, but otherwise these rooms are devoid of interest and personality, IMO.
Clearly stegersaurus and I are from the same corner of the world - that was all I thought of when I saw this post.
That first room makes me cringe. The colors are beautiful, but really, how is that a functional room? Every piece of furniture looks uncomfortable and uninviting.
i am a huge fan of orange, but i never thought to pair it with purple. i really love the last picture.
random tangent- who makes that crazy awesome ship chandelier??