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Colour lesson

This Pie in the Sky is Clean And Dirty

06/03/2013
30 Comments

When Irene and I were in Toronto for our last Specify Colour with Confidence ™ Training, we walked around the Kensington Market and came across this most adorable restaurant. Photo by Maria Killam Love the clean colours, the blue outdoor carpet, and the coordinating green and blue chairs. This is a great example of why…

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4 Ways to Work with Colour over Neutrals

05/07/2013
30 Comments

When I give the participants in my colour training an in-class exercise, or homework (hey you get your money’s worth with us) I notice that when they select colours to create a colour palette they take the undertone of whatever paint chip/s they have to work with and repeat it. So if I show a…

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The Right Colour to Paint your Deck

04/07/2013
11 Comments

The ONLY surface that I did not paint in the house we bought and renovated last Spring was the deck. Now that we’ve worn a couple spots running back and forth between the house and the office (below) I can see that it was formerly forest green. Had it still been that colour, it would…

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An Open Letter to all Paint Companies

02/15/2013
47 Comments

Alright my lovelies, it’s time to literally shake things up in the paint world! Wake Up! It’s 2013! Most of you are so behind with your colours it’s totally painful. I conduct on-line colour consultations all over the world and I use your fan decks. Before I can even look up a colour on some…

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How to be Smart in a World of Dumb Designers

01/15/2013
135 Comments

Recently, I received this very generous email from one of my lovely readers (no names will be used here), who said I was welcome to share her story: I have made literally every mistake in the remodeling book! I really do not like to complain, I dislike myself for being negative this way…but my mind cannot…

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Rules for Choosing the Right Colour Quartz Countertop

10/25/2012
16 Comments

House and Home I received some new quartz samples the other day. This is how they were packaged when they arrived. . . Every single sample had to be pried off with a screwdriver and taken out of the packaging. Why? Because it’s virtually impossible to choose the coordinating colour for your walls or cabinets…

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What’s an Undertone?

08/04/2012
18 Comments

    Green beige walls, butterscotch sisal carpet (source)     The first semester I taught Colour Theory, I was well into a long talk about colour and specifically the many undertones of colour. All was going well (or so I thought) until one brave soul at the back of the class tentatively raised her…

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Two Ways to Know if You are a One-Trick Pony Designer

07/13/2012
19 Comments

I have a confession. Lately I’ve been feeling like a one-trick pony. Because I’m specifying the same grays over and over and over. Thank goodness I know better. Shaker Beige (source) Because here’s the thing. When the brown trend was here, it was the same, “Oh, you have an espresso brown sofa, brown floors, and…

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How to Mix Patterns the Right Way

07/09/2012
19 Comments

A big hello to Maria Killam’s readers! I am your guest blogger, Saffronia Baldwin, also an interior designer and author of the blog Design Like the Pros . Thank you, Maria, for this special opportunity to do a guest post. I’m sure I can speak for all of us when I say that your fabulous…

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Maria’s Main Bathroom: Before & During

07/06/2012
37 Comments

This is one of our dated bathrooms which will be renovated soon. It was so hard for me to get past just the colour in here. See the chair rail? If you have it in your house and you don’t have wallpaper above it take it out! Photos by Maria Killam I didn’t touch this…

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How to Inject Fresh into Your Earth-Toned House

07/01/2012
22 Comments

Yesterday I posted my Styled Interiors board from Pinterest on my Facebook Fan Page and one of my readers commented that it was her favourite board and wondered if I would post more images on tablescapes for coffee tables and end tables. So I clicked over to Ralph Lauren Home because I adore the styling…

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6 Ways to Choose the Perfect Neutral Paint Colour

05/06/2012
59 Comments

I received this question the other day and realized that even though my ebooks covers it in comprehensive detail, I don’t have a single post that answers this question directly. So here are the 6 best ways to choose one: 1. Start with the living room because that’s where the entire colour scheme for the…

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Green Yellows are Mostly Bad: Before & After

04/22/2012
23 Comments

My lovely client Lynette called me to help her fix the colour in their newly renovated bathroom, it was not working. Before Although this colour did appear in her surround tile, it did not improve the appearance of her bathroom. Since the undertone of her gray tile was purple, that was the colour I selected…

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This Colour Mistake will make Your House look Bad

04/03/2012
33 Comments

One of the biggest mistakes designers and homeowners make when choosing colours is definitely around the world of undertones but next up is mixing clean and dirty colours. Yes you can break any rule but most of the time the combination of clean and dirty will make perfectly good tile or fabric look bad together….

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Guests Posts for Colour Me Happy in 2012

01/03/2012
10 Comments

Thanks everyone for your comments on yesterday’s post! I’ve been thinking a lot about the ‘likeable’ part of that discussion and I agree with you that ‘nice’ doesn’t necessarily get you everywhere so that’s not it. It’s about being more ‘gracious’ everywhere I go. My ‘Year of Grace’. I like it. This year I really want to expand my blog to include a lot more guest posting. And here is what I’m looking for. People already use Colour me Happy as a resource to make colour decisions on everything from sofas to cabinet hardware to countertops, etc. so I’m looking for you, the expert in your niche to educate my readers even further.

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