Skip to main content
CartClose Cart
Category

How to Choose Colour

How to Choose the Colour of your Kitchen Appliances

08/04/2011
16 Comments

I get this question a lot along with “Should they all Match?”.  There are many ways to do it but only a few that look good.  There’s white, black, stainless and of course the high end look of paneled appliances.  I’m not even going to mention actual colour options (like bronze) because I think they will…

Continue Reading

How to Turn Oak Furniture into a Thing of Beauty

07/24/2011
18 Comments

This is William, reading a book while waiting for breakfast! (Photos by Maria Killam) My sister Elizabeth took my mom and me to the Vedder Mountain Grille in Yarrow for breakfast this morning and I immediately loved the country charm, the food and that it was clearly decorated with creativity and an eye for detail….

Continue Reading

How to Pick Paint Colours with Confidence

07/18/2011
38 Comments

My mom, my baby sister Elizabeth and my brother-in-law Bill have bought property in the country together and mom is building a carriage house on the 2 acre lot. They have a huge vegetable garden, a lamb and a goat of all things. It’s the country. It’s also the reason why I live 5 minutes…

Continue Reading

The Correct Way to Choose Exterior Colour for Tract Homes

06/21/2011
24 Comments

I drove by this neighborhood in Abbotsford a few weeks ago and stopped to photograph this row of homes. What works about these colours is that they are not particularly trendy. A trendy colour scheme would have included brown or gray. There is nothing wrong with using ‘trendy’ colours for exterior, however what I’m pointing…

Continue Reading

The Dangerous Side of Creativity

06/19/2011
25 Comments

The other day while in a clients home discussing kitchen finishes, she announced “I’m going in this direction with the hardware because I want to mix it up a bit’.  And I realized in that moment that there was a post in that statement because there is a danger in doing that.  Not like ‘mixing…

Continue Reading

What Colour should you Paint the Closet?

05/26/2011
33 Comments

Okay this white closet I can handle (source) A few years ago, I was working with an interior designer, Jan Romanuk (my business partner at the time) on a renovation for a client and I was asked to choose the colours for the closets in the bedrooms.  I specified a white thinking it would be…

Continue Reading

What Colour is the Best with Crema Marfil?

05/13/2011
14 Comments

Photos by Maria Killam I arrived in Atlanta on Monday night and Tuesday, during set-up for my True Colour Expert Workshop, I popped over to Chadwick Lakes for a consultation.  Fran has a gorgeous home in this gated community and you’ll see more of it in my next post.  This one is about her master bathroom….

Continue Reading

3 ways to Coordinate Colours for your Entire House

05/09/2011
16 Comments

The best way is with a designer you trust. We know what will work today and how to pull it all together to create a look and feel including colours that flow from room to room. If you are choosing everything yourself, here are some guidelines from a recent consultation: If the mountain won’t come…

Continue Reading

When can you Ignore the Carpet Colour (if it’s bad)?

05/01/2011
24 Comments

source I recently posted about an on-line consultation where my client had a very bossy carpet. In the main living areas of the house, you should try very hard not to ignore the wall-to-wall carpeting when decorating your home. So if your carpet clearly has a strong undertone of either green, pink or yellow beige,…

Continue Reading

10 Ways to get a Fresh Look with a Black Sofa

04/20/2011
14 Comments

There are just as many black leather sofas in family rooms as brown ones these days all over the country so if you are looking for an update or need black or a dark colour because you have kids, here are my recommendations: 1. How about this one in fabric? This is IKEA’s Stockholm sofa….

Continue Reading

What Everyone should Know about Blue

04/17/2011
34 Comments

(Blue Hubbard 8438 Sherwin Williams) House Beautiful   My favourite place for blue is Master Bedrooms.  So many people use white bedding and blue is so pretty with white. And, blue can be a tricky colour to choose. If you don’t gray it down enough, it ends up baby blue on the walls and–unless you…

Continue Reading

Restoration Hardware’s Stain Colour & my Bookshelf

03/30/2011
22 Comments

source Last summer I drove out to a house in the country where the drywall had just been installed and my client was ready for colours.  She had this bookcase/library in the garage waiting to be installed in the great room. Restoration Hardware To ensure that there was enough contrast between the paint colour we…

Continue Reading

Are you Waiting for your Paint Colour to Propose?

03/23/2011
38 Comments

source Before the gray trend hit the streets, anytime I would hold up a basic linen shade (like BM Muslin or Manchester Tan) clients would say “ooooooooooooh that’s too gray”, or they would just raise their eyebrow and say “That’s the most boring colour ever!” So then I would either pull out a cooler gray…

Continue Reading

How Influenced are you by Colour Names?

03/10/2011
37 Comments

People often ask me ‘who names the colours in a fan deck’?  Quite often in a colour consultation when we’re looking at 2 colours and both are equally as good because they are so close, sometimes the name of the colours decides it for us. Doesn’t San Francisco Bay (BM802) sound like a pretty blue? …

Continue Reading