Last year, I wrote a post show­cas­ing the before and after of my home, and I received an anony­mous com­ment ask­ing, “Do you hate color?”.

My Guest Bedroom

I thought this was funny, because it depends on one’s def­i­n­i­tion of “color”. Bright col­ors? Dark col­ors? Neu­tral col­ors? To me, gray and beige are col­ors, and they just hap­pen to be my favorite col­ors for inte­ri­ors.  How­ever, this could change at any point.

My guest twin bedroom

I really do like the occa­sional use of a bright color. I recently added 2 orange Her­mes “H” pil­lows in my gray guest bed­room. It gives the neu­tral room a “pop” of color.

Last year, I was bored with my gray TV room. I still loved the walls and sofa, but it was a lit­tle bland. I decided to add bold orange touches to brighten the room.

I added an orange and gray Her­mes Throw, 2 pil­lows in Schumacher’s Betwixt, and many orange books.

I placed stacks of books in shades of orange on the con­sole below the TV to add an extra “pop” of color.

I bought as many books with orange cov­ers as I could find at the BD Jef­fries store in Charlotte. They have an amaz­ing col­lec­tion of cof­fee table books. The rest I ordered from Amazon.

And what do ya know? “Tan­ger­ine Tango” is Pantone’s 2012 color of the year!  Accord­ing to the Pan­tone web­site, “Provoca­tive Tan­ger­ine Tango, an entic­ing juicy orange, is a viva­cious and appeal­ing refresher to enliven anyone’s out­look this spring”.

It’s true. Sit­ting on the sofa in my orange and “tan­ger­ine tango” acces­sorized room makes me feel refreshed!

I recently added aqua accents to my liv­ing room by paint­ing the back of the book­shelves, hang­ing aqua sconces, and plac­ing aqua col­ored pil­lows on the linen sofa. The room is still very neu­tral, but the added “pop” of color makes it feel very fresh.

I went to look at my pin­ter­est boards, and I saw that I had already “pinned” many fab­u­lous neu­tral rooms with “pops” of color.

Mas­succo Warner Miller

Veranda

Jan Show­ers

Phoebe Howard

Mary McDon­ald

Jacque­line Der­rey Segura in House Beau­ti­ful

Lor­raine G Vale

Pin­ter­est

Karen Robert­son

Martha Stew­art

Tobi Fair­ley

Pin­ter­est

WAYS TO ADD A “POP” OF COLOR TO YOUR HOME:

Frame art in dif­fer­ent sized col­or­ful frames

Martha Stew­art

Add a few throw pil­lows to your sofa.

Etsy

Add con­trast­ing bold trim to pillows.

Nest Egg

Cover a bak­ing sheet with fab­ric to make a fun (and inex­pen­sive!) tray.

Martha Stew­art

Add con­trast­ing trim to furniture.

Hick­ory Chair

Add bright pil­lows in con­trast­ing col­ors to beds.

Caitlin Wil­son Textiles

I’ve made some design mis­takes in my homes in the past using color (i.e. bright yel­low walls and red sofa in my old town­home in col­lege… liked it for about a day).

My advice would be to keep big pur­chases in neu­tral, clas­sic col­ors (sofas, rugs, bed­ding, etc). This way, you can add dif­fer­ent col­ored acces­sories accord­ing to your moods, the sea­sons, or even pan­tone color trends.  Believe me, it’s a lot cheaper this way!

So I guess my answer to anony­mous’ ques­tion is NO, I don’t hate color, but i do pre­fer it in mod­er­a­tion and usu­ally just a “pop” of one bold color.