Here’s how to make the world’s most beloved color pairing work. Old-House Interiors
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Current Issue: July/August 2012 |
Editor’s Note
Maybe, one more time, I’ll consider using blue in my house. Catherine Lundie’s article in this issue has me almost convinced. She takes me back to when I moved from New York City to Gloucester and couldn’t wait to re-create the beachy look I’d seen on Fourth of July house tours in Annisquam. Nothing, I thought, was as beautiful as those rooms in pale blue, beige and white, with their windows facing the surf!
I bought a house near the sea and prepared for the delights of coastal living by painting my bedroom deep twilight blue with white ceiling and trim. Before I’d rolled the third wall, I was aware of eyestrain. “It’ll work when I move the furniture back in,” I thought. I also painted the living room that cool gray-blue often used on porch ceilings and decks.
Then winter settled in, months and months of winter. Eyestrain turned into headaches; the bedroom almost literally made me sick. Unlike Annisquam, a summer colony on the lee of Cape Ann that enjoys sunsets over the water, my part of Gloucester is in the easterly glare of the open ocean; my bedroom faces north. When the sky is not cold and gray, it is cold and blue. It occurred to me that I had painted the interior of my house in colors that worked for only eight weeks of the year.
The first round of painting was temporary, as renovation proceeded over the next eight years. In that time I discovered the famous house of artists Carl and Karin Larsson—in Sweden, another cold, gray place by the sea. I could stare at photos of that house over and over. It inspired my next round: orange shellac and sunflower gold on beadboard, and lots of soft, agreeable greens. Against the warmth of fir floors and cabinets, the revised color scheme beat the blues!
Patricia Poore, Editor of Old-House Interiors
