Know the Rules, and Use Them with Gusto. the Rules, and Use Them with Gusto. ... which neutral...

Know the Rules, and Use Them with Gusto.

This book is the intellectual property of the author. © Renate Hering-Shepherd 2009

All rights reserved worldwide.

No part of this publication may be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or reproduced in any way, including but not limited to digital copying and printing.

The author, Renate Hering-Shepherd, has made her best effort to produce a high quality, informative and helpful book. But she makes no representation or warranties of any kind with regard to the completeness

or accuracy of the contents of the book. She accepts no liability of any kind for any losses or damages caused or alleged to be caused, directly or indirectly, from using the information contained in this book.

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Introduction

This little book is about how neutral colors work, and how you can apply this knowledge to your home. When you understand …

what makes a color 'neutral', how the hues and values of neutrals interact with each other, how knowledge of color extension can help you create a harmonious room, how neutrals affect the mood and 'temperature' of a room, and which neutral /color combinations always work,

… then you'll decorate with confidence, and with a sharp eye for what looks great and what doesn't. The illustration on the front page shows a section of our model room, our little 'design lab'. The furniture in that room will stay in place throughout, but the colors, the patterns, even the view from the window will keep changing as you browse through the pictures and study the laws of Stylish Neutrals. Enjoy!

Renate Hering-Shepherd PS) One word of caution: I have done everything possible to make sure the illustrations look as convincing on your screen as they do on mine. But computers – and color printers even more – are famously fickle when it comes to color representation. I do expect the pictures will look good at your end, but there's just no guarantee. So if you do the short exercises in this book, and find that your color answers disagree with mine, then it may just be that your computer screen disagrees with mine about the color information. It may have nothing to do with how you see color. But if in doubt, you could do any or all of the following:

1. Check the colors on a different computer (if you have access to one).

2. Get someone else to look at the images on your screen, and see whether this person perceives the colors the same way as you do.

3. Contact me. Contact me also if this book doesn't print out correctly, or if you have a question, or if you want to tell me your opinion about this book ;-)

2© Renate Hering-Shepherd

All rights reserved, worldwide

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1. What Are Neutrals?

Well, it all started with a core family of seriously neutral non-colors (A): black, white, and all the gray hues that you get when you mix black and white. (I call them the "funda-neutrals"). Next, there are the close relatives with just a bit more color in their genes (B): tinted grays, almost-blacks, off-whites with color undertones. Then comes the extended family (C): cream, ivory, beige, greige, sand, khaki, stone, and the gamut of browns from subtle to right-in-the-face to deep, dark and strong. These hues can be quite biased: greenish, bluish, reddish, purplish, yellowish, pinkish, or a mix of several of these. Still, in many environments, these biased hues would count as "neutrals". I'll show you how that works. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start with the "funda-neutrals" – black, white, and gray. A. "Funda-Neutrals"

Here they are, in all their glory:

If you were to deck out a room with just black, white and gray, you'd get something like this:

The only item in color would be the view from your window. Unless ….



… unless you decided to leave your brown leather slippers on the floor. Or eat an orange.

Notice how easily your eyes find that little orange when it is surrounded by funda-neutrals? Just to compare, here's a non-neutral version of the room where you wouldn't immediately notice the orange:

(We didn't really need this much color to visually 'disappear' the orange … I just couldn't resist having some fun with it.) The pictures do show that

White, gray and black make colors 'pop'. This is most true for white, which shows off any color – saturated or not – in all the radiance it can muster.

Purist versions of the neutral color scheme are not easy to keep that way. Real

life has a way of intruding. (I firmly believe that the pristine funda-neutral color schemes you sometimes see in shelter mags are never actually pristine and neutral, except right before a photo shoot.)



B. Almost-Neutrals

Check out these blacks:

Can you see color in any of them? (I do hope this works on your computer screen and/or printer. If you're up for a quiz, note down your answers & you'll find the solutions on the next page!) Gray, in real life, is almost always slightly biased and either 'warm' or 'cool'. And that's good, because funda-neutral gray, as you've seen on the previous page, looks rather dead. You want 'warm' or 'cool' in your home, but definitely not 'dead'!

With gray, it's easier to see than with black: Which row is neutral, which is 'cool', which is 'warm'? (Solutions, next page!) Next up, the whites. With whites, it's really quite easy to see which way they lean. But whites are not easy to So instead of me doing another piccie for you, why don’t you have a look around the house and compare a few whites! For example …



Hold a white towel against a white wall or a

Solutions for previous page:

BLACK

1. Black. 2. Bluish black. 3. Brownish black. 4. Greenish black.

GRAY

1. Neutral grays. 2. Cool grays. 3. Warm grays.

white pair of shoes, a white shirt next to an off-white one, a porcelain plate next to a white cupboard door, and try to see … 1. How the two whites compare; which one is

darker? warmer? more biased/muddied?

2. Which colors besides white do you notice

in them? The usual suspects are:

gray, yellow/brown, pink, blue.

3. How do the different whites look under artificial and natural light sources?

[SIDEBAR:] The little exercise above is essential for mastering color. When you focus on comparing colors, your mind automatically starts analyzing color relationships wherever you look. This is how you develop a great color sense, because:

We never see a color on its own – we always see it in combination with other colors.

The way we perceive a color is heavily influenced by its neighboring colors.

If you keep observing how colors interact, you build an understanding of color relationships that will help you create any color scheme you want in your home:

harmonious & serene, warm & welcoming,

More info about

combining colors in Chapter 2!

quirky & interesting, stimulating elegant …

… and all your color schemes will work!



C. Biased Neutrals

If you add a little more color to gray, black, and/or white, you'll get a range of neutrals that bridge the gap between the 'funda-neutrals' and what we perceive as 'real' color. Here are some random examples: Cream: neutral gray color white

Misty Gray, with a sage undertone:

Taupe:

In the 'taupe' example, you've probably noticed that the orange is not actually a clear, unmuddied color. There's plenty of brown and gray in it, so it is already a mix of saturated color with neutrals. It's closer to terracotta than to true orange. Just like taupe, most neutrals contain not just one, but a whole mix of colors. This is especially true for the color brown. D. Brown: A Special Case

Brown can be very 'colorful' and biased; it does not always have the easy adaptability and neutrality of gray (even though there are earthy, warm 'crossover' grays that contain generous helpings of brown). Despite its color bias, brown is generally seen as a neutral, and this is for two reasons:



1. It does not appear on the color wheel as a distinct mix between two colors or color groups – it can contain elements from around the color wheel in a single hue.

2. We are used to seeing natural browns around us: tree trunks, plant stems, fall foliage, wooden furniture and flooring, natural leather, stone walls & tiles, things made of fired clay, cane baskets, straw mats, etc. (In a similar way, green plants are not perceived as an intrusion into any color scheme, no matter how unrelated to green that color scheme might be. However, green is reconizably a secondary color on the color wheel, unlike brown.)

Here are some examples of natural browns, broken up into components:

Would you really have expected to find pinks, purples and blues in something "brown"?



I admit that I didn't always pick out the most dominant, obvious hues in the samples. Those hues are easy enough to see, but they're not what makes a color rich and gorgeous. Similarly to music, where the overtones are what gives a sound its warmth and luxury, it is the color undertones - in what looks like just some shade of brown - that make a color rich and exciting.

[SIDEBAR:] When you look closely at a chunk of wood or a pebble, you can see color variations and 'odd' flecks of color that are quite different from the overall color appearance of the piece of wood or the pebble. And even in many wall paints, which are supposed to give you a flat, homogenous covering of color, you can still see (or guess) the colors that have gone into "mixing" the dominant shade, tone, or tint. So you can have, for example,

blue with undertones of pink, purple and gray, or purple with undertones of gray and brown, or brown that has pink, orange, and olive green in it.

If you want to develop a neutral color scheme for a room, start with a color 'analysis' – like the one that I did on the previous page.

More about developing neutral color schemes in Chapters 3 & 4!

Take something neutral-colored that you love and want to keep on view in that room – the tan leather sofa, the wooden floorboards, a table, a rug, a blanket, or an exposed stone wall and break it down into a 'mosaic' of colors.

Then, play with the colors you got from your analysis. Lighten them, darken them, mix them with hues from the color wheel for accent color, until you have an idea for a complete color scheme. It's a great way to start!



2. Combining Neutrals

Know the rules, so you can break them with gusto!

In this chapter, we will explore the importance of

Color (when mixed into neutrals) Value (the relative lightness or darkness of a color), and Extension (the amount of space covered by a color).

A. How Neutral?

Most neutrals have at least some color in them, so you want to be sure all neutrals/colors in a decorating scheme work together before you go ahead and spend a lot of money. But analyzing color isn't always as simple as it looks. How good is your color sense? Would you like to test your skills? ;-) Here's a little quiz: Compare the two pictures below. Decide in which picture the gray cushion in the center (middle of the window) is a more neutral gray (more 'funda-neutral') than in the other.

You sure? Really sure? (PTO for the correct answer!)



You knew that was a trick question, right? They're both exactly the same tone - a slightly bluish, cool gray. However, the gray cushion looks more neutral in the beach house picture on the left. It is clearly 'out-blued' by its surroundings. In the picture on the right, the cushion in the middle does look distinctly blue against all the funda-neutral grays in the neighborhood.

RULE #1:

Treat neutrals as colors.

They interact with other neutrals and colors.

Never assume they will work well in combination until you have seen them

next to each other.

So here is… B. Color Values, Drama, & Clutter

Again, two pictures for you to compare. How are these two rooms different?



Answer: The value contrast in Picture 2 is higher than the value contrast in Picture 1. In other words, in Picture 2

the dark colors are darker ('lower' color values) and the light colors are lighter ('higher' color values) than in Picture 1.

When you heighten the value contrast in a room, the following things happen:

Shapes and lines stand out more against the background. They look more defined. This is especially true if these are dark shapes and lines against a light background; dark colors carry more visual weight. (See how much more 'visible' the rocking chair and the table legs are in Picture 2, compared to Picture 1.)

Patterns attract the eye more, particularly if they are large in scale. (The crisp white patterns on the darker cushions in Picture 2 look more vivid and make the window seat look more attractive.)

The higher the value contrast, the more dramatic any dark shapes, lines and patterns will look. (This is easy to overdo! Personally, I find the lower part of the wall in Picture 2 already too dark and austere for comfort.)

Many competing dark lines and shapes against a light background can amount to visual clutter, especially if they're small and fussy-looking. (So if you'd rather 'overlook' the table legs in Picture 2, paint them a lighter color!)

RULE #2:

Before you decide to notch up the value contrast in a room,

decide what lines and shapes you want to be more visible.

pay attention to the 'clutter potential' of smallish, dark shapes and lines against light backgrounds.

Here is …



C. How Much Is Too Much?

What's wrong with this room?

To me, this picture suggests a waiting room at a morgue. Maybe it's because in Western cultures, black is so closely associated with death. My husband had a similar reaction: he walked past just now, saw the picture on the screen and said, "Jeez that's awful!" Black absorbs light and can drain a space of energy. If you use it over large areas in a room, the color becomes overbearing and depressing. On the other hand, black can be a

More info about using black in Chapter 3!

great accent color:

It defines shapes and lines It gives visual weight to items or areas It is like an elegant 'signature' across

a room if you use it right. You just have to know when enough is enough. So how much of a color is 'too much'? That depends on the color. With black, it doesn't take much to overpower a room. With a lighter, fainter color, it might require painting all the walls, plus the floor, for it to be too much. At the end of the day, it's your judgement call! Among the neutrals that (in my opinion) can ruin a good room when used too much are:



Dark colors that have a lot of black in them: charcoal, deep browns (and, well, black!)

Reddish/orangey browns

Yellowed, stained ivory tones

Bluish, bleached, 'clinical' white

Flat, dead gray.

So here is …

RULE #3:

You can get away with a lot of quirky color – if you use it in smallish doses. For larger areas, use only colors that won't be looking

obnoxious to you in a week's time.



3. Neutral Color Schemes: Examples

In this chapter, I'll take you through some basic but important elements of using

A. white B. gray C. brown, and D. black …

… in neutral color schemes. See what you think of our little laboratory living-room as it morphs into different moods. A. White

An all-white room, with no art on the walls, is defined by two key elements:

the shadows, and

the view from the window (if it has one).

(White rooms always look strange when they're illustrated like this – please, just use your imagination!)

To add interest to an all-white scheme, here are a few ideas:

Use (soft) furnishings with 3D surfaces: texture and shadow patterns add interest and enliven the space.

Use subtle variations in white tints/shades to add depth to the room. The most commonly successful combinations are:



• white and cream/ivory • white and light gray • white and very light, 'chalky' sage, blue or pink tints.

One of the characteristics of all-white rooms is that they seem to "float". This can be a very nice effect, particularly for a bedroom. Imagine drifting off on a cloud!

But if you would like a sense of some ground under your feet, you'll need to add lower color values to the room, at floor level. For this room, let's use a large rug that picks up the beach color from outside the window:

To restore some balance to the room, you'll then need to repeat the carpet color elsewhere. A few cushions would provide a natural color extension:



(TIP: Whenever you add (neutral) color to a white room, take a lighter tint than you would normally do. It will be more than enough.) B. Gray

With gray, you can create beautifully subtle color schemes, and the picture below is just one out of a gazillion of possibilities. The challenge with gray (as with all neutrals) is that even if gray fabrics or paints look fairly neutral on their own (or next to non-grays), they will show their true colors once they're next to each other. So be very careful when you combine different tones and shades of gray! Let's take the 'seaside' room from the previous page, and decorate it in tones of gray that pick up the land- and seascape outside. I'm going to use greenish and bluish grays for a bit of variety, and I'll add a lot of white to keep the general appearance of the room bright and summery.

Notice how the overall effect is much cooler than in the white-and-cream seaside cottage? That cream color had quite a bit of yellow in it, and it lit up the white room with instant 'sunshine'. It was much warmer than the blues and grays in this picture.



Now, in a room exposed to midday sun, you actually want cool colors. They give your eyes and mind a sense of relief from the glare and heat. But for a north-facing room under a northern sky, you would choose warmer tones of gray. Let's demonstrate this, and create just a small, subtle shift in the atmosphere by replacing the green bias with a warmer, reddish one. The idea is to turn the color temperature up a degree or two. The effect is quite subtle. Have a look:

This room is now definitely headed towards brown, without overtly saying so. But before we do the same (head for brown, I mean), let's summarize some key points about gray:

Gray is one of the most versatile colors; it (almost) never gives offence and combines well with other neutrals and with colors.

When you combine gray with saturated colors (from the color wheel), it has a habit of receding into the background and putting the color center stage.

On its own, gray can look a bit boring – except when it is recognizably biased towards a color.

It is a perfect companion for white: it can create depth and 'ground' a white space without infusing it with distinct color.

Deep shades of gray need strong, saturated color to balance them; otherwise, their effects will be similar to that of black – oppressive and bleak.



C. Brown

Do you like brown? Does it remind you of pleasant or unpleasant things? Is it connected, in your mind, with a particular decorating style? (For many people, it is.) And when you think "brown", do you have a particular hue, tone or shade in mind? (Most people do, and everyone has a different hue/tone/shade in mind.) Nevertheless, brown is extremely versatile. Not only does it come in an amazing range of hues; it also lends itself to a multitude of styles, from rustic simplicity to warmth and opulence to polished elegance (and many other looks in between). One of the nicest ways to create a predominantly brown color scheme is by using wood as

seating storage flooring wall panelling accessories (etc.)

Most woods have great texture and a unique depth of color. They look 'alive'. If you think brown might work for your decorating purposes, consider stirring some wood into your design scheme as well!

Let's do a test run on our "holiday cottage" living room. The Scandinavian-style chair and the general simplicity of the room suggest a 'modern rustic' take.



Even though brown does not cover a large area in this color scheme, and despite the sweeping sea views from the window, the brown wall panelling creates a cocooning, inward-facing feel. If you were using colors, you could create an almost 'cave-like' look in the alcove, by painting it

warm peach, or deep apricot, or

Read more about neutrals & colors

in Chapter 4!

burnt orange, or light terracotta

and by adding cushions in

peach, deep cotto red, burgundy, and olive (for a bit of relief!)

But we're not going to do that here. Instead, let's see if we can give this room an upmarket air, by using several neutrals plus … D. Black



Notice how little black you need to give a room a crisp, sharp edge? In this picture, I used black only for

the blinds the top of the window seat the rocking chair frame, and two out of four cushion covers (white with black patterns, at the center)

The darkest cushions are a deep indigo; the walnut flooring and the walnut coffee table are dark brown, and the patterns on the white cushions far left and far right are indigo as well. So it doesn't have to be black every time. In fact, sometimes you don't need any black at all, especially if an interior is in light colors throughout. If you want to emphasize a beautiful line, 'lift' a tired-looking corner or create a finished look for your furnishings, try "soft blacks" for a less austere option:

espresso charcoal midnight blue, or deep indigo.

These colors are softer and easier on the eye than black, but they usually provide more than enough contrast and emphasis for a room. Well, now that we've got all the basics covered, let's proceed to have some fun adding color to the neutrals!



4. Color Injections

Sometimes a neutral color scheme just isn't enough. Nice, but not enough. Neutrals can't give your home the kick it gets from "real" color. But even when they're upstaged by something altogether more vibrant and energetic, neutrals are the perfect base. They're like pastry cases waiting to be filled with fresh strawberries. So here are three color schemes that consist of a neutral base, topped up with color. They're easy to create, and can be taken into very different stylistic directions. A. Straw, White, Blue

Here's an informal, summery, feel-good color scheme that looks great anywhere with a view to greenery, the sea, or just lots of sky.

It's a color scheme that really comes into its own when you add a lot of textured, natural materials in straw colors: baskets, mats, rugs, a wreath made of ripe wheat, oats, or barley (rye is greener, but looks good as well)



Many hues, shades and tones of blue combine well, as long as you mix enough of them together. However, it's always worth keeping an eye on the colors in different light sources to make sure they really do go together.

I've made this version look as if the cushions had seen their fair share of trips to the beach (picnics included), so if you preferred a more polished look, you might want to go for crisp whites and neat royal blues!

B. Rainbow

This is not for everyone, but if …

you have an array of cushions that you've always wanted to pile into one place

you can't walk through a flea market without buying fun sofa cushions

you possess more antique fabrics than you know what to do with

you love experimenting with new and unusual color combinations, but you don't want to repaint your house every time

you just like a happy, colorful look in your home … then this idea might be for you.



With a 'rainbow' color scheme like this, you can't go wrong if you stick to the following guidelines:

Make sure the 'rainbow' is pulled together by one surrounding (neutral) color, which is also repeated throughout the room. This creates visual unity.

Remember that neutrals are colors, and you want to give your colorful collection a great but unobtrusive background. Funda-neutrals are your best friends here!

When you're using a lot of different colors together, make sure there's some kind of connection between the items. They could all be, for example,

• cross-stitched, or • in retro colors, or • in chalky, washed-out tints.

If the collection is too diverse, it won't 'read' as a unit.

Small patterns look like solid color from a few feet away, so make sure you survey the color combinations from across the room before you make your final decisions.

(There's one more color scheme, please scroll down …)



C. Brown, White, Red

This is quite a folksy color combination. It is used a lot in traditional French mountain homes, as well as in the Alps (with the exception of Switzerland - the Swiss tend to go for blue, white and brown). Now, just because it's an old-world color scheme doesn't mean you can't use the very same colors in your minimalist living room or your ultra-modern kitchen. This color combination is wonderfully robust, and great fun to experiment with. (I mixed in a bit of soft gray here, for added subtlety.)

For a 'vintage' look, choose different hues and shades of red, as well as different (but simple) pattern designs.

To play up the European folk reference, remember to mix in some embroidered pieces, preferably red-on-white cross-stitch. (If you don't cross-stitch, fake it. Get a little patch of embroidery from somewhere, cut it out if necessary, and stitch it onto a ready-made cushion cover.)

For a luxurious feel, mix cotton and linen with velvet!



There, you're done!

I hope you enjoyed this little book and got value out of it. And it would, of course, be great to hear from you. At the moment, I'm working on an e-course about using colors in your home, and I'm keen to create something that will be useful, informative, and inspiring. So it would be great to hear your opinion about the e-book you've just read. Would you leave me a comment, please? I have prepared a short feedback form for you; it takes about two minutes to fill in. Thank you very much for your feedback, it is much appreciated! Here's to a great home – yours. All the Best,

Renate Hering-Shepherd www.dreamhomedecorating.com



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Know the Rules, and Use Them with Gusto. the Rules, and Use Them with Gusto. ... which neutral...

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