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.

I’ve been liv­ing in Char­lotte for over a year and moved into a new home about 6 months ago. I found a great newly ren­o­vated home with all hard­wood floors, top of the line appli­ances, built-ins, and plenty of room! I liked what the pre­vi­ous own­ers had done, but I was excited to do a few updates.

The front door opens to a liv­ing room on the left and the din­ing room on the right.

This is the pre­vi­ous owner’s liv­ing room.

This is my liv­ing room when I first moved in. I dec­o­rated this room around the Hick­ory Chair Oliver tufted sofa from Circa Inte­ri­ors. Next, I bought an Oushak rug from my favorite rug dealer, Sayid, at Metrolina Expo. I used two bam­boo side tables with jug lamps.

Last week I hung the 1920’s burlap paint­ing sim­i­lar to Picasso’s “The Beau­ti­ful Fer­nande” (1906). I bought it in Aix-en-Provence, and I was orig­i­nally going to sell the paint­ing but couldn’t part with it! In France I pur­chased an old wooden tray and 19th C boule balls and put them on my tufted ottoman. You can’t see it, but I put in crown mold­ing, and I also painted the built-in book­cases the same color as the walls.

Din­ing Room Before

I painted the din­ing room the same color as the liv­ing room, and used the same pais­ley fab­ric for the draperies as the tufted ottoman in the LR. The din­ing room is small, so I used a nar­row, painted side­board with a few vin­tage can­dle­sticks and hotel sil­ver. I bought the cane back chairs from Inte­ri­ors Mar­ket­place, where I also sell my French furniture.

The chan­de­lier is from Circa Inte­ri­ors in Char­lotte, and I found the sconces and wooden bowl in Paris. This paint­ing that was orig­i­nally in the liv­ing room is by Char­lotte artist Libby Smart.

From the din­ing room you enter into the kitchen. The first thing to go was the valences!!

I had the kitchen re-tiled with a neu­tral beige, because the orig­i­nal tile was light blue (not my col­ors) and had but­ter­flies and drag­on­flies (def­i­nitely not my style!!) Side note– love the Viking Stove (used about 3 times :)

The kitchen opens up to a den. I didn’t like how the pre­vi­ous own­ers had their sofa block­ing the French doors lead­ing to the deck.

The den has com­pletely changed! I had a flat screen hung over the fire­place. I bought the Swedish Cab­i­net last week and filled it with vin­tage mer­cury pieces and old vel­lum and parch­ment books. I bought this Oushak rug in Dal­las a few years ago, but I have decided to go with some­thing a lit­tle more casual and youth­ful, so I just ordered a Fibre­works jute rug. I get the most com­pli­ments on this reclaimed wood cof­fee table with an iron base from BoBo Intrigu­ing Objects (pur­chased at B.D. Jef­fries in Char­lotte). I met BoBo owner Mark Sage (also cre­ative direc­tor for Restora­tion Hard­ware) last week in Atlanta and he gave me great tips for my next Europe buy­ing trip!! I used Lee Jofa fab­ric for the draperies, and the sofa and chairs are Hick­ory Chair (my favorite com­pany and next post topic!!!)

There was a down­stairs play­room, and I obvi­ously won’t be need­ing that for awhile!

I turned the play­room into another den/tv room and painted the walls Ben­jamin Moore HC-87 (Ash­ley Gray– my favorite color!!) I orig­i­nally ordered a Lee Indus­tries one arm loveseat and an attached cor­ner­ing sofa, but the large sofa sec­tion wouldn’t fit through the hall­way!! Since it was a spe­cial order, I couldn’t return it. I had to order the smaller one arm chaise instead and gave the sofa to a friend. This was my first les­son as a new designer– always mea­sure the doors and hall­ways!!!! I used the 1920’s Louis Vuit­ton trunk I bought in Paris as a cof­fee table (thanks for all the sug­ges­tions about putting a piece of glass on top!) The bam­boo side chair is the Gil­low Arm Chair from Hick­ory Chair. The cus­tom bound rug is from Rober­tex.

I hung a flat screen on the wall above a 19th C con­sole table. The Lee Indus­tries ottoman isn’t there any­more, because it is too big (another les­son!), so I have 2 smaller ones on order.

Down the hall from the new TV room is a guest bedroom.

The guest bed­room is a work in progress, and I wanted to do all neu­trals. I painted the room Ben­jamin Moore Pow­ell Buff and ordered a beige rug from Rober­tex, which makes the room a lot more cozy than the pre­vi­ous owner’s guest bed­room. The draperies, bed­skirt, and Euros are made from a Schu­macher fab­ric. The bed­ding is all ivory from Sferra (the best bed­ding ever in my opin­ion!) I just ordered a small neu­tral check High­land Court fab­ric for the skirted side table. I’m also wait­ing for my tufted head­board with the same Hick­ory Chair fab­ric as the two Camp Ottomans at the end of the bed. The wall behind the bed is going to be com­pletely cov­ered with framed 1800’s botan­i­cal prints I bought in France. They are so hard to hang and there are at least 30 of them, so I’m only halfway done! I still need to find a Swedish dresser and mir­ror to go between the win­dows– any suggestions?

In front of the two win­dows I used the Hick­ory Chair Kit Chairs with the same neu­tral fab­ric as the ottomans and head­board. I saw this Louis XVI side table on Vin­tageweave Interior’s Face­book page and loved it, so they sent me two from L.A. (I have an extra one I’m not using — any­one want it?) I pur­chased these lamps made out of vin­tage can­dle­sticks. This wall will look so great once I fin­ish hang­ing the botanicals!

This is pre­vi­ous owner’s study/sitting area upstairs…

And now its my cozy sit­ting area! My mom had this Hick­ory Chair check ottoman she wasn’t using, so she gave it to me. I based this room off of that check fab­ric! I have to admit I copied her by using the dif­fer­ent sized checks, which was really her designer (and my men­tor) Will Merrill’s idea. I love the comfy daybed (and I even painted it myself!) I am obsessed with these 19th C painted Trumeau Mir­rors I bought in l’Isle Sur la Sorgue, France. I was orig­i­nally going to sell the mir­rors, but decided I can’t live with­out them!

Down the hall there is another guest bed­room, which was dec­o­rated for the pre­vi­ous owner’s daugh­ter. First thing I did was paint over that green! I decided on Ben­jamin Moore’s Ash­ley Gray (of course!)

This is the guest bed­room now! I based this room off the gray tufted twin head­boards from Inte­ri­ors Mar­ket­place. I never even thought about doing a twin room until I saw these head­boards! I knew it would be a tight squeeze (the pre­vi­ous own­ers only had one twin bed and up against another wall), but I thought it would be cute. The pleated nat­ural linen bed­ding is from Pine Cone Hill and the white cane cov­er­lets are from Neiman Mar­cus. I bought the reclaimed wood lamp from B.D. Jef­fries.

In France I found these botan­i­cals that were already framed in an old win­dow. I’m obsessed!

My favorite thing I did was turn this nurs­ery off the mas­ter bed­room into a sum­mer closet!

I now have a van­ity… in my closet!

Hands-on-Woodworking in Cor­nelius put in the racks and shoe shelves, which I designed! And there are 3 other walls like this!!

Mas­ter bed­room before… SO much dark wood!

This is my bed­room a few months ago. I have since added a Rober­tex rug to make it more cozy, and I recently put up crown molding.

This was the back of the house.

I painted my home Ben­jamin Moore Cop­ley Gray (HC-104). My mom gave me the Restora­tion Hard­ware Antibes table, chairs, and umbrella for my birth­day! Unfor­tu­nately I had to already put the cush­ions away until Spring­time. You have to over­look the fall leaves and the land­scap­ing that is in-progress!

Had to get rid of the play set…

I put in a few trees and more grass instead.. Which is now going to be taken out again for my new dri­ve­way and garage (see my pre­vi­ous post below!)

Hope you enjoyed my before and after pho­tos! I have really loved dec­o­rat­ing my new home!