“I keep going back to the challenge that both designers and clients have with color. Did you grow up surrounded by fearless color choices, or were your formative years spent in color deprivation? I remember growing up in many different houses and my mother insisted that each of our living rooms had to have light Celery Green paint on the walls, “because that room of the house should be restful.” One of our clients hated green in any room of his apartment because all green shades remind him of hospital walls. We all carry color memories and associations and they inform our color sense. Ask yourself, “What color experiences did I grow up with?”
Is it so wrong (or so funny) to think of our relationship to color as requiring Twelve Step action? I don’t think it’s a stretch at all. Let’s go back to color maestroSamuel Botero on the subject: “Working in Mexico, I learned not to fear color but to embrace it. Can you imagine a beige garden or an off-white forest? Some people think it’s sophisticated to banish color. It is not.”
Part of “not fearing color” or more positively, “embracing color” is to look at systematically changing our relationship with color and how we use color in our projects. With sincere apologies to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), the first of many worldwide twelve-step fellowships, we came up with The Interior Designer’s Twelve Steps of Color (okay, this is meant to be humorous, but you can also take it seriously).
- We admitted we were powerless over color—that our design lives had become unmanageable.
- Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves—Nature and the World around Us—could restore us to color sanity.
- Made a decision to turn our color sense and our lives over to Inspirational Sources as we find them.
- Made a searching and fearless color inventory of ourselves.
- Admitted to our clients, to ourselves and to fellow professionals the exact nature of our wayward color palette sensibilities—and our clients’ color aversion.
- Were entirely ready to have Inspiration remove all these defects of our professional character.
- Humbly asked Inspirational Sources to remove our color shortcomings.
- Made a list of all design projects we had harmed due to our color challenges, and became willing to make amends in all future projects.
- Made direct amends to clients whenever possible, helping them to catch our Color Inspiration, except when to do so would injure them or others.
- Continued to take personal color inventory, and when we were color blind or uninspired, promptly admitted it.
- Sought through vigilance and thoughtfulness to improve our conscious contact with Color Inspiration wherever we can find it, hoping only for better knowledge of fresh Color Palettes and the power to carry them out in our projects.
- Having had a color awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other interior designers, and to practice these principles in all our client projects.
Still another way to find inspiration is to look for color diversity in furnishings and accessories. Come on….you can do it.
Now, let’s talk about window coverings and bring it back to our expertise. Do you realize how much color we can splash in a room with a few panels of color, and even fabulous prints? All it takes is imagination and guts, and here at Jacoby Company, we have both. Give us a chance to bring color into your lives, every so gently if need be.
The Draperista’s have it down.
Cory and Bree
THE DRAPERISTA’S
Courtesy of: William Sonoma
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