Showing posts with label Clean and Dirty Color. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Clean and Dirty Color. Show all posts

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Clean vs. Dirty Colors- My OWN Experience

I can admit, before I went to the wonderful Maria Killam's True Colour Expert workshop, I didn't know much about color.  I liked color, I used color (not always right), and I noticed color... but I didn't have confidence in why it worked to use one versus another.




At the workshop, one (major) concept we learned about was the difference in clean and dirty colors.  I remember reading Maria's blog posts at Colour Me Happy over and over, trying to understand it.
I didn't.
To solve that problem, I took a little jaunt over to Vancouver and attended the workshop.



While I sat in class and filled my brain full of information, I kept thinking about how wrong a few colors in my home were... and how my husband would wish that I never attended after I told him we needed to repaint almost, well,  everything. 



One of the colors that I knew was wrong was an accent wall in my living room.  (If you read my earlier post about accent walls, don't be fooled, I am not completely against them!) 
The living room is very nuetral with pops of bright blue, green, and turquoise. 






To tie in the bright blue accents, I painted an accent wall a wonderful blue from a piece of art in the room.   Bad idea. It wasn't wonderful on the wall.
 So I repainted it with a different shade.  Better, but still not great.
There was just something about it I didn't like. Too bright? Too blue? I didn't know and wasn't willing to keep repainting it.  

BEFORE: 

Before.
It really wasn't this bright in real life.
Camera flashes + horrible photographers = SUCKY photos.


Before. No flash.

  During the True Colour Expert Workshop, I sat in that classroom and realized why I didn't the color I had blindly chosen. It was way too CLEAN for the room. It screamed 'kids room' and made everything else look dirty. All I did was find a DIRTY blue that was already used in the room and repainted.
  
AFTER:
After. The dirtied version of blue.




Better, don't you think?


Before 



 After
The best part? My husband didn't even notice.
And if I didn't tell him I repainted, he still wouldn't notice.  

Now... all I have to do is replace my coffee table, paint the other walls, install baseboards, replace all the lighting, find a new lam.. (K, I'll stop now)

 
If you need assistance with your own clean and dirty (home interior) issues, email me at coleyhueske@hotmail.com


Posted by Coley at 11:12 AM 24 comments
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Monday, August 15, 2011

You Dirty Color You

You walk into a room and feel something is 'off'. Nothing in-your-face-this-looks-hideous, just something not right. Your eyes scan the walls, looking for the culprit and...nothing. 

Source

Source

It could be a simple case of mixing clean vs. dirty colors, a common mistake that happens to homeowners and designers alike.  Most rooms (read- most) look best if all clean or all dirty colors are used. When clean and dirty colors are mixed, not only does it break up the harmony, but it makes other items in the room such as the curtains or carpet look dirty.
 
So you know how I said this is simple? I may have exaggerated.  Because a clean color can be clean in some contexts but dirty in others. And the classification of clean and dirty changes when compared to one another. 

Look at these two swatches. Can you tell which is dirtier?

BM 2123

BM CC-730

It may be difficult to decipher on the computer screen, but the first is the dirtier of the two.  Neither is a 'better' color than the other, it just depends on where and how it is being used.

Stay tuned for my own struggle with clean and dirty colors in my living room... and how I fixed it! 

 
Posted by Coley at 9:29 PM 15 comments
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