Color Stories: Rooms to Remember

“The whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the mystic realm of color.”
-Hans Hofmann

Color is such an integral part of our daily lives. Color can make things appear bigger, smaller, colder, or warmer. It can alter our moods, it can make us hungry, it can evoke a particular memory. We play with color, we create new versions of color, we combine and we separate and we experience. We capture it in photographs, in paintings, in memories. We try to describe it with words but never really capture it in it’s entirety. If you really think about it, color is a bit magical. Color Stories are short interviews about the role color plays in the various areas of people’s lives. Today we decided to share a little about how color has played a role in our lives in the form of our favorite rooms. After reading, let us know what is your favorite room and why (and what color is it)?

BECKA

I have always really enjoyed decorating (even if I’m only moderately good at it). I’ve been known to rearrange entire rooms multiple times a year just because. When I was in college, my best friend and I would stay up till 4am arranging and re-arranging our living and dining room every few months. I can’t help it, I’m a very visual person and am always on the search for the perfect arrangement, the perfect colors, and the perfect accessories to make a room or an event or a look come together. There is beauty in the details!

My favorite childhood room:
When I was in high school my mom and dad let me pick out paint colors all by myself to redecorate my room. I had just gone on a school trip to Italy and was on an everything-Italian kick. I painted the walls a dark olive gold and painted the trim a golden yellow color to coordinate. I even painted my closet doors to match the trim. I promise it didn’t look as bad as it sounds, but it did look like a bit like a cave it was so dark in there. (I liked to describe it as “cozy”) I must have been inspired by the catacombs. My parents were good sports though.

My favorite college room:
When I was in college I wasn’t allowed to paint so I had to use color in other ways. My favorite place that I lived in college was a two bedroom apartment with my high school best friend. My everything Italian kick was still lingering so I had paintings and Italian art framed on my walls, a garnet bed spread and a rusty orange throw blanket. It was so pretty. Red and orange were the constant accents. We also had a white sofa and white walls in the living room and decorated with pops of rich red. That was the first time I ever felt like a grown up.

My favorite room now:
I went back and forth trying to decide because while I love the paint color in our guest bathroom the best (it’s a soft, muted purple) I just love our living room the most overall. The walls are a light peach shade to match the tile floors. There is white crown moulding all around and a big window on the north side that lets light in almost all day long. When we moved into this new condo I wanted a really soft and natural color palette throughout for an airy feel. I had been living with dark red for too long. All the colors in this room are soft and neutral except for a few small accent items like my fiance’s red jimbay, a large Salvador Dali art book, and two green palms. It’s my favorite place that I’ve ever lived.

TRISHA

My favorite childhood room:
My pink, upon pink and upon even more pink bedroom I grew up in. I had a canopy bed with pink frilly bedding, pink poofy curtains (that are still up in my room at my parents house to this day) and luckily my parents drew the line and vetoed pink carpet and floor-to-ceiling pink paint. When I got to high school, I upgraded my bedding to a multi-colored (but mostly pink) plaid bedding, but most everything else pretty much remained the same. Ironically, today, I don’t own a single piece of pink clothing. And in the last place we lived, I painted our office/guest room two (or maybe three?) different shades of pink before painting it green. I definitely outgrew my pink phase.

My favorite college room:
I lived in a dorm my freshman year (definitely NOT my favorite college room) and then lived in an apartment that didn’t allow painting, so I spent my college years living under a “lovely” shade of (cold, sterile, contractor’s) white. I had several Mark Rothko prints hanging on my wall in my room and often dreamed about how amazing it would be to have a real Rothko hanging on my wall.

My favorite room now?
Hard to pick just one, but I’d say my favorite room now is our living room in the last place we lived in. The condo was corner unit right above a storefront with the perfect people-watching balcony and lots of natural light. It’s hard to tell from this photo (please excuse the snapshot, clearly I am NOT the pro photographer on this blog), but the wall were painted the most amazing light, silvery blue from Restoration Hardware. Even in a Florida downpour, the wall color made the room feel bright and cheery. My favorite feature was the built-in bookcases we put in. When we first moved in, we decided to have two empty bays that we would hang art in (but never got around to doing so) because we didn’t have enough books to fill the wall-to-wall shelves. 3 years later, we could have more than filled those bookcases. I loved having the books on display as they brought so much color, texture and interest to the space.