Name: Chris & Kendra
Location: Santa Ana, CA
Type of Home: Live/Work Loft Townhome
What inspired you to use color? We want our home to reflect our love of art and design, finding a current way to showcase our midcentury modern and pop art influences. There is a misperception that contemporary spaces are cold and unlivable, but we prove that with the use of color and natural materials (stainless steel, walnut, flokati rug, teak wood, and concrete-look corian), a modern interior can be warm and comfortable. We want visitors to be surprised at every turn (not unlike Gehry designs), giving them a new view from every living space. We painted accent colors on key walls, so that every vantage would include more than one color field. From any room, you see multiple color planes, kind of like a Mondrian painting in 3-D. We left the largest walls white to leave big areas for our growing art collection, and so we could feel like we live in an art gallery!
Color Tip: Avoid painting all the walls in a room the same color...it's much more interesting to create focal walls. Find a way to connect two smaller spaces with a colored wall extending from one room into another, or taking the same flooring through multiple areas to elongate the space. Select colors that are less saturated than you think you want, because in large areas and different light (especially sunlight), they will seem much brighter than the paintchip. Don't be afraid to be eclectic and mix colors, patterns, and elements of different styles. Surround yourself with things you love and have collected and want to look at every day!
Colors Used: Swampwater, Stone, Bangkok Rust
Fall Colors Introduction -------------------------------
Welcome, everyone, to our Fourth Annual Fall Colors Sharing & Contest. We're looking for the most beautiful & colorful home in the world and sharing all of the great ideas we get with our readers. This year we're amping things up and hoping to do things better than ever. There are two basic phases, the Sharing Phase and the Voting Phase...
1. Sharing Phase - you comment, judges decide
The 40 best, completed entries will be posted on a daily basis for three weeks. You can view them all at anytime via our new, improved contest pages under ALL ENTRIES. During this time your comments are VERY IMPORTANT as our six judges will be choosing 16 finalists from each region based on comments and their own colorful opinion.
2. Voting Phase - you vote till you drop
Starting October 20th, finalist voting will begin on a daily basis through our new bracketed voting system, which will pit our 16 finalists against one another until only one remains. Sound exciting? We hope so.
Best, Maxwell
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Kool, Kool Kitties!
Loves it.
Very Nice - Especially love the floor-to-ceiling draperies at the double-height window-wall.
Love it, love it, love it!! Great use of color, and I love all the patterns and geometric shapes everywhere. My favorite space is the bedroom though! Where did you get all that bedding (btw, I love that it's not matchy matchy)? The gorgeous art piece over the bed adds even more interest and color to the room, and complements the bed very well.
Love it!
Where are those blue pillow cases and blanket/duvet from? I LOVE them!
I think this is my favorite. What a great place. It is fun and stimulating without feeling cluttered. I love the earthy colors.
love that you fit two sofa seating areas into one large space without it seeming like a sofa showroom. and like girlinatower said, it looks lived in and fun but not in a cluttered way.
Absolutely gorgeous!
This is fantastic. Not at all my style, but you clearly have a cohesive style of your own, and did a great job executing it. Great!
My eyes have been thoroughly tickled and my brain is very happy now. Excellent job on a lovely home!
This place is so dramatic! Its one of the first entries that has the "wow I could never pull that off myself" AND "I would totally want to live there" factors going at the same time. Super impressive!
(Also, i think i might directly copy the marimekko fabric 'art'!)
The bedroom has to be my favorite room. The colors are wonderful. I believe that the bed linens are Ikea?
Kitties look pretty happy!
Way too much drama (or too much black!) for me, but I really really like the bedroom
Wow that is a lot of stuff. Not to my liking a bit too much of the items of this decade and it will look very 2007 in 2010. However, good use of paint colors defining spaces.
Very nice to go modern, yet still be charming and livable!
I love the black modernist wall hanging/room divider! (The one to the left of the sofa in the first picture.) Where did you get it, or was it a DIY?
whoa.. i saw the photo of the bed and that could almost be mine. i have the same bed, sidetables, orange stripey pillow and plum coverlet. although my coverlet is usually covered with cat hair. i see you have come up with a solution to that problem!
Love the palette and the choice of pieces. But it comes across a little too busy, like decoration stuck "on top of" the space rather than a design integrated into the space.
Simplify a little bit by not making *everything* contrast, and go for larger areas of the same color or pattern. Same feel, just streamlined a little.
this place is amazing. it definitely should win!! its been a while since ive seen a place here that really makes my jaw drop and this did it! great job.
A great backdrop for those gorgeous kitties.
really enjoyed looking at this home!
cool home, awesome kitties!
I like those black O things hanging down as a room divider; they look good with that rug.
I have the same bright blue bedding from Ikea. I was thinking of changing it, but the way you've mixed it up has inspired me to work with it. It's a lovely combo.
this was fun - great use of black. I've never seen an ikea malm bed look so good!
this place is my dream apt, bones wise. *sigh* my place is pretty much the size of your living room! haha
i do really like it though. there's a bit too much stuff, but it's really wonderful/
I can see why people love it but for me there is too much trying to grab my attention.
Totally mod with money (and I don't mean that in a bad way). It's like something from the Avengers, maybe the Tara King(?) years. I love the explosiveness everywhere.
my eyeballs can't stop giggling.
sorry, couldn't resist.
i like how your arranged your books.
there is a lot going on here, a bit over-designed in my opinion, but there are definitely some great pieces.
I can't believe it. Its like my dream apartment, I love everything about it. Excellent Entry! Excellent!
Great space you have there! I really like everything you did.
Nice cat. I mean, gross cat.
You've got to see this one in person to appreciate it
Wow, this place is so cool. Can I come over and listen to you play your guitars?
Please tell us where you got the groovy black hanging room divider by the sofa in the living room... thanks!
We got that hanging divider from Chiasso. We were actually going to make something similar and then we saw this in their catalog and figured that for the time it would take to make it it would be better to just get this one. It's actually not Black it is Espresso Walnut, which is also what out cabinets and anything that looks black in the photos is. The only Black element in the photos is the Robert Motherwell Print above the Flatscreen. hahah! I know it looks black in the photos because it is back lit.
Cheers,
Chris
Hi Chris & Kendra - Just wanted to tell you how much we like your home and I don't know if you looked at the photo of our house but we have a lot of similar items including the Marimekko wall hanging and Hip Haven's bullet planter (just different colors). You have great taste ;-)!
Plus we have a cat lurking in our photos as well. I like to think in this contest you were our doppelganger.
Rad.... Absolutely Rad
You soppouse to be in final four! (at least)
Very European Style with American courageous in Colors.
Paulina from Poland.
This totally blew me away! Absolutely gorgeous. The black divider is my favorite part but I love how you use all the open space. It looks beautiful and yeah, I really want your apartment.
Great style and use of colors! Where did you get those wood floors? LOVE!