Name: Bob
Location: San Francisco
Type: Owned -- A 1925 home in San Francisco that we've been remodelling for the last 8 years (a painfully slow one room at a time effort).
Why I use color:
I'm a nester -- and dark, rich colors are for nesting. It feels good to come home and curl up with a book in a room that glows like a fire in a fireplace, especially when the days shorten and the rainy season starts.
2 good color tips:
1. A lot of colors go together -- don't limit yourself to just a few. Google cornucopia and do an image search to see all of the colors on the first few pages. You'll find orange, brown, green, gold, red, purple... Everything doesn't have to match -- even if you're going for fall colors, black and white can still be used to add crispness.
2. Chenille rocks -- there are a lot of warm, woodsy colors and patterns to pick from. If you're going for warm and think your cat can be trained to claw elsewhere, go chenille.
2 good color resources:
1. Gee -- apart from the pumpkin patch, we spent a lot of time at Home Depot and Lowes, buying and then discarding paint that we ended up hating. We settled on sand paint and love the result. Ralph Lauren and Behr both have sand paint lines and I found almost all of of the Lauren colors go very well together. Bless Ralph for taking a lot of guess work out of the process. (Note: sand paint is a lot of work to apply but it adds an interesting texture and depth to otherwise flat walls. I just hope we still like it 20 years from now because it is going to be a real pain to take off if we decide to go flat again :-)
2. For fabric, we spent a day digging through paisley swatches at Giorgi Brothers showroom in South San Francisco. They have a very large collection of swatches and you can take samples home on loan.
© 2009 Apartment Therapy
Lovely! True to the bones of the house, but doesn't feel like a museum.
(Golden beige paint is so 1920s that one manufacturer sold roll-up shades in a variety of popular beiges, so that the shades would tone with the walls instead of being stark white.)
The room feels warm and inviting, I could definitely see myself curled up with a book by the fire.
I love it. Getting really tired of all the candy colors, for myself I prefer darker colors.
Not really my taste, but admirable execution of the idea of a "nest". Very cozy
I keep picturing Edward Gordon Craig - scotch in one hand and a cat on his lap - reading poetry to a naked Isadora Duncan - doing dance stretches in front of a roaring fire. Beautiful image. Beautiful room. Very sensual.
i think the colors here are lovely.
but on another subject, i think the scale of your furniture is way off. it makes the room look much smaller and more clausterphobic than it probably really is. cozy and nesty are good, but you can acheive that without completely crowding out your space. look for cuddly armchairs that aren't to McMansion scale.
wonderful color choices for what appears to be a craftsman era home. it's very warm and snuggly without being dark and gloomy.
I love love love this. Reading by the fireplace, what luxury!
What's the name of the paint color on the walls?
It feels as though it would be very dim. Hope it's well-lit. Is that why there aren't any curtains?
This is a near miss in my book. The furniture seems wrong for the space and the perfectly matched sconces over the fireplace are too Home Depot looking. The screen doesn't work either. I like the color on the walls, but not with a white ceiling.
Thanks for the comments.
In 1997, the room had blue carpet, white ceilings, and pinkish walls. See (long url, requires pasting into your broswer address bar)...
http://photos.imageevent.com/bats/houserenovations/Previous%20Owners%20Living%20Room.jpg
Agreed, the end result is dark. It's a north-facing room. Fortunately we hae a south-facing den on the other end of the house.
And it's a small room but maybe not as crowded as the posted picture makes it seem -- what you see is an artifact of a fisheye wide angle lens that makes the room seem to close in more than it really does. Maybe this helps...
http://photos.imageevent.com/bats/valleystreet/Living%20Room%202006.JPG
As for paint color, the upper walls are Behr Curry-something... and the lower are milk chocolate.
Anyway, we had fun and sometimes not so much fun tearing the room apart and redoing it. It took a lot of long weekends!
Bob, what lovely windows. And I love fireplaces. It looks like the space is perfect for you!
Beautiful space..very warm and inviting color
Inviting the way an upholstered coffin is inviting. Not my style at all.
beautiful, era-appropriate without going overboard, wonderful warm colors and a sense of personality - and what gorgeous detail on the fireplace!
The dark, rich theme is nifty, but I agree with the opoponax -- the furniture seems out of scale. Too stuffed and imposing. Dark translates as brooding, not cozy; rich becomes uninviting, not luxurious.
Absolutely beautiful. I love the rich warm feeling the room gives off. Great fireplace.
I LOVE IT!!!! It is warm, inviting, and makes me want to come right over. The color choices are really excellent
Some good things here... like not trying to make everything "match" etc. That said, the rug only "almost works"... but the fake plants don't work at all. Or are they only fake-looking? (i.e. fake-fake plants) That's probably nitpicky... the real issue, as has been said and seconded, is that the furniture is off-scale. But, who cares? You must love this or you wouldn't be here! So, enjoy it and thank goodness you don't need the contest money, right?
It says "dark, nouveau riche" to me. But, that's prob. due to the over-stuffed, oversized furniture and the new contstruction look of the fireplace front. Too bad the old one wasn't something you could work with. Makes the place seem like a new construction site when it clearly isn't (looking elswhere... like at the windows).
THIS WAS ONE OF THE VERY FEW I REALLY ENJOYED! LOOKS LIKE ALOT OF WORK WAS PUT INTO IT,AND ALL THE UNIQUE OBJECTS WORK WELL TOGETHER!IT IS DEFINATELY AN AQUIRED TASTE BUT I THINK ALL THE NEGATIVE FEEDBACK IS UNCALLED FOR. ISAY GOOD JOB AND KEEP GOING,ITS REALLY GREAT!
Bob, Those pictures make a huge difference! Who knew!! Makes you wonder if this is a photography contest at some level, you know? Anyway, thanks for posting those. What a beautiful room you've made. Did you do anything to the fireplace? It looks different somehow, but I can't say how. I changed my vote... congrat's!
The fireplace? Oy. I spent a long day scrubbing it with TSP and a light acid solution to remove 75 years of soot and an unidentifiable waxy coating on the bricks. Then I re-appled gold leaf to the outer diamonds below the mantel. Apart from color, though, the biggest change was to cut the bookcases down to their original "mission" height.
http://photos.imageevent.com/bats/houserenovations/Previous%20Owners%20Living%20Room.jpg
Oh -- the plants are alive -- except for the ficus in the foreground of the second pic. I killed too many ficus trees in the past. Never again. :-D
That explains the fakus feeling I had about the ficus! But, seriously, with the alternative pictures you provided, it is so much easier to see what a marvellous job you've done with this room. I had to change my votes to "insta-finalist" after seeing the supplemental pics. You have a lovely home; lovely, comfortable room. Thanks for giving us the second chance of some other photos with which to make a better assessment. Best of luck, Bob. Congrat's.
Love this. Just the place for a cup of tea or port and walnuts.