Dear Melissa:
My wife and I just bought a new contemporary house that we love. However, I love an antique white color on the walls but my wife wants more color. My question is, designer to the rescue, with really tall walls, how would you use color in a really big room??? How do you pick the colors?? How do you separate the rooms?? My wife and I are in conflict. F.G., NH
Dear F. and Mrs. F.:
I don’t do counseling, but what I think I hear you saying (do I sound like Oprah?) is that you’re worried that while a neutral color can be boring, a strong color will overpower a large room. Fear not. As long as the wall color has something to do with the colors of the furnishings, you should be all right. May I suggest a compromise? Try a neutral nonwhite: a gray-green or yellow (which go with everything), or one of the many unidentifiable grays that are so fresh now.
Don’t worry too much about rooms that have doors that close. Those colors are self-contained. Concentrate instead on the rooms open to one another.
The easiest way to find a color scheme you can both agree on is to pull one from a patterned fabric or wallpaper you already have in the room. The textile designer already came up with colors that go well together. Assign a different color from the mix to each room as the predominant color, and then use the other colors for accents. M.A.K.
