apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I'm going to say green. Yes. I'd put in a very light, greyish green that will compliment the orange and make it pop, but not compete.

Like this.

I've lusted over that sofa for so long....i'm getting moist just thinking about it again.

take a cue from Missoni... almost any color will do!
it all depepnds on what mood you want to evoke....
serene? playful? smoky and sexy?
you can achive any of these with different colors on the walls... try a dark blue or moss green on the walls to make it pop...
or surround it in neutrals, like taupe, to ground it..
a silver-gray would look lovely, more etherial, I think...
plum colored walls would be quite sexy with it....
so you see, no wrong answer....
take a chance and let us know.

PS. buy a large pad of coloring paper at a craft store and use this to test the paint and tape the different tests on the walls. that way you can move them around the room at different times to see the effect. (Beats having to paint over a bunch of test swatches later on)

I would totally do grey-a soft grey with an accent wall of charcoal-ooh so sexy!
a playful Lime Green would totally pop there too, maybe as accents-vase,art,pillows so you can change it up seasonally!!
The Toronto furniture show this year had lots of orange and Lime green,WOW!!

I keep the colors very basic: white, grey, or glass and chrome. I'd then add a little bit of blue as an accent. Orange and blue are a natural complementary pair.

(Great couch by the way! And congrats on taking such a bold step ... you'll love it. Orange is my fav color.)

Turquoise

Blue! Dark blue or a lighter but not so powdery blue. I saw Kenneth Brown do a room on HGTV that I'm sure you can search on the website so you can see the exact blue shades that work, and I saw the blue/orange combination in another room, here's the blog link, scroll down when you get to the page and it's the one posted on 7-17-07.

http://habituallychic.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html

It also depends on what style you are going for and this couch evokes, to me, the 70's to an extent, so with this in mind, I'd say stay within the red/yellow/orange range for additional colors and use brown for the base color and have all trim be white or somthing similar to that.

Really, orange will work with a wide variety of colors and you can play it off of cooler colors as well as with warm and neutral colors too.

Good luck with it

Try a gray with a slight purple tint -- Martha Stewart had a color with a name like "mercury glass" that is a little more purple than I mean. You get the cool sophistication of gray with some of the zing of including orange's complement (blue), but moving a notch along the color wheel to a purple undertone makes it a little more unexpected. Or you might even get away with an eggplant wall.

i love the couch! i have curtains that are a similar color, a chocolate brown couch and light blue walls. i was very nervous painting the walls light blue but love it! any light cool toned color would probably be pretty :)

I think a mix of whites, creams, cafe au lait for all other upholstered furniture, walls, floor coverings etc....with teak wood tones and then add pops of a blue green such as a vintage globe or wall map, pottery and colorful artwork.

Would love to have this problem. (nice furniture!!)

I would avoid using the gold contrasting colors too liberally on the other major pieces and surfaces. With too many saturated colors, you will experience visual fatigue and your new sectional will lose its impact. For your case goods, I would choose a deep chocolate brown. You can also go with a deeper shade of gray, or a warm gray with some brown in it. Get a color swatch of the couch, if possible, and bring it to the paint stores to get the hues and saturation right. For accents, an olive-y green or not-quite-kelly green can work with either. For the walls, the decision depends on your wall color and floor color, which you did not mention.

thank you all for your comments! i think the consensus is grayish green or blue, even though you all have made compelling suggestions. i'll let you guys know how it turns out after i'm moved in.