- Home Interior Design – Decorative Ideas
George Snead and Margi Vorder Bruegge who gave a lasting impression to “The Oprah Winfrey Show” audience room makeovers in a day provides the following tips and advice on Paint Colors, Decorative and Wallpapers.
THE ROOM
How to address your walls? That is a big question. Straight paint? Faux finish or decorative paint? Wallpaper? These are questions that need to be addressed in every room in a home.
THE CHALLENGE
n How do you decide which rooms to pick a simple paint color for and which to faux paint?
• Do you want wallpaper anywhere, or is it just too “old school” for you?
• Even if you only want to paint, do you custom blend the color? Which finish, flat or matte or eggshell?
THE SOLUTION
We can’t tell you how often a client comes to us, especially with new construction and says “my builder wants you to pick paint colors right away.”
This is a big mistake, unless you already have your rugs and most of your upholstery fabrics picked out. Fabrics and rugs vary greatly in price, so if you’re picking these items after your rooms are painted you may find your options lessening while the prices escalate.
Paint can be custom mixed for a fraction of the selection on the paint wheel, so make your specific color selection your last choice. There’s nothing wrong with knowing you want a beige or a blue, or whatever color in advance, just wait until you have all the room’s pieces before making your final choice.
Flat paint is fairly unforgiving; matte gives you a slight luster above flat, but is easier to clean, while eggshell provides a good sheen for many decorative finishes, along with pearlized paint, or paint with a pearl finish.
We actually prefer very subtle faux finishes to straight paint, at least in most of the public rooms of a house. We’re talking a light mottled look with a subtle blending of shades, more of a monochromatic finish. A light strie or cross-hatch finish in soft shades also provides a good backdrop for today’s transitional rooms.
Wide tone on tone stripes are fairly traditional, but when applied in neutral beiges with the contrast provided by the sheen difference between say an eggshell and flat in the same color, the look is sublimely subtle.
We do a lot of Venetian plaster as well. However, most of our Venetians today are applied in a linear fashion, either dragged horizontally or vertically, as opposed to the more traditional swirled application.
Many clients, especially younger clients designing their first house, want nothing to do with wallpaper; it’s too old school. And, in general, we’d agree.
However, there are occasions where you want a bolder pattern than can be achieved with a decorative finish. Many papers mimic a faux finish — have built-in texture — or use trompe l’oeile to achieve their effects. Grasscloth has made a comeback; they come in diverse colors with metallic threads woven into the design.
Expensive papers have layers and layers of texture. Some even have faux gemstones or metallic elements blended into their design. And horror of horrors (for those of us old enough to remember them the first time around), there’s the reemergence of metallic and flocked papers — or even worse, flocking on a metallic paper. I remember stripping such a paper from the dining room walls of my first house.
At any rate, the sky’s the limit. There are so many choices. You can paint, paper or faux paint. We generally go for a mix, heavy on the faux, with an occasional nod to paper or straight paint.
