Bold is the word in color.

So often people ask me about color. As if, deciding on color combinations, is the most difficult decision to make. Here's a few answers on color:

One, look around in nature.

Two, what catches your eye?

Three, use a color chart.

Take this picture that caught my eye. I snapped this shot because I like the faded color. Although these balls are not from nature, they have been 'affected' by the natural elements. To my way of seeing things, this makes them better and the color more interesting.

If you have a color and like it, but want to add other colors, even for slight accents; what methods work?

Look at the way a flower lands in a patch of grass, or the various colors on a ripening peach. Use the odd colors even if they are strange to you. I call them the 'muddy colors'. Use them together, as pillow colors on a sofa.

Or draw yourself the color chart. Remember the primary and secondary colors? If you map out the triangle with the three primaries; red, blue and yellow, and then add an overlapping triangle with the secondary colors; purple, green and orange; you can use the opposite color across from your original color, as an accent color.

If your color is a pastel, then know its saturated form. Cotton candy pink may be a pastel of cherry red. But know this color. Then draw a line across the chart. The opposite of a purple-red, is a yellow-green. If you use a pastel in one of these colors, you might want to try a concentrated form of its opposite. Deep chatruese green is great with pale buff pink. Have fun, whatever you do. Be bold!

I learned something about customer appeal, from being in the business of bright colored furniture, where we often took bold steps in using color of paint and upholstery fabrics. Our shop employees would often remark....."Wow, who's going to make that bright piece work in an interior?" It never mattered. People would buy something because they liked it, and often because it was something they wouldn't have done themselves.

Again, be bold. The key word for color. If you aren't a bit daring, even with a multitude of neutrals...stand back and ask yourself: Can't I be a bit more bold?

Carolyn

"What do you do?", she asked.

While in the grocery store, itchy about waiting so long in line, I spoke with a little girl, about 8 years old, behind me in line. She was quite pleased to wait. She had a pretty dress and we admired each others handbags. She asked me what I was; a teacher or a mom. I liked the question, and answered her that I was a mom and a teacher too...sometimes. Then she asked me what I like to do, and I told her I like to design.

After a little talk about decorating her room, she continued. "I want to be a designer too." she exclaimed. "What do you do, to be a designer?" It was a loaded question and I tried to answer in simple words, that she would understand. But the question haunted me all day.

What do I really do?


Sometimes I hunt for one color in a fabric, through showroom after showroom. Recently I looked for pumpkin for two weeks. I saw it in flowers, in the packaging of products in a store, on a scarf folded in my drawer. I saw the color everywhere, until it was replaced with another color.

Sometimes I bury myself in accounting between contractor estimates and purchase orders and invoices, confirmations, cuttings for approvals, and on and on and on.

Then there are contractor meetings, and client meetings and cell phone calls when I would just like to drive my car in silence. Maybe it's a problem discovered inside of a wall, unexpectedly. Or a product sitting on a dock needing to be picked up, or gravel dumped on the wrong lot or assuring the lady I would replace her crushed flower bed. It could be about anything. Always the client tries to understand why things take so long. Always it takes longer than expected.

Finally projects progress and installations move into completion. I enjoy the end result because it's so much fun to know it was all worth it. It feels good to see the client enjoying their new space.

Again the language of design begins with the next project and the simple conclusion of 'what I do' settles into my daily routine. I start by pretending I'm my client. I pick up a pencil to create a space and all the other things fall away. It's only me and my client, standing in a world of potential forms. What could be a greater experience?

I'm that little girl and the answer, as to what I do, turns back into itself, like waves reaching the shore.

Rumi wrote:

"What we are is this ocean, too near to see, though we swim in it and drink it in. Don't be a cup with a dry rim, or someone who rides all night and never knows the horse beneath his thighs, the surging that carries him along."




Carolyn

Visual keys remind us who we are.

Hope is the key to heaven. Imagine throughout the interior of your living space, you place a skeleton key on the wall at eye level; wherever your eyes rest. It could be at eye sight when you are sitting in your favorite chair. Each time you see that key; you remember hope and being in the present. Basically the keys become reminders of why we are here.

The image of 'keys', I use, to represent the many opportunities we have to remind ourselves of what we believe in. By placing items as 'keys' in certain places, we also remind people in our lives, what's important. When our children see fresh flowers, grass blades cut, or pine cones brought in, placed each day on the entry table, by the door; they learn about the beauty of nature in a house. When you hang pictures of your ancestors, you remember where you came from. It doesn't matter what item you use; its beauty is what it represents to you.

If your 'sites' are those of unfinished things, like cushions fraying (I happen to like this, but if you don't...) or plants needing to be tended, or closets where nothing can be found, don't worry, it's very simple to fix.

Call up all your friends, tell them you need help. Start by giving them a broom, waste paper bags, empty boxes, and with your checklist in hand, tell them what you would like altered, removed, or organized. You get the idea.....I mean....what are friends for?

If you don't know where to put things, rent a space outside your home.

Then come back, place beautiful, functional, things around you at the 'skeleton key sites' and watch what happens. Don't forget: Consciously choose each piece.

Hope, reverence and harmony will enter your life. I promise.

My next question is..why would you have it any other way?
Carolyn

What to keep and what to let go of.

Sometimes I ask my new clients: "If I were writing a play about your life, I would need the essence of you, represented as items on the stage set. What, would you say, do I use?" These items, in color, design, history and textures, allude to the true essence of you. Once I have the 'you items' then I put them on stage and leave the rest in a storage unit.

Perhaps some stored items come out later, but only if you, as my lead character; miss them.

I might want to leave blank spaces on your stage, or a blank wall...otherwise new things can't enter. Empty space is a doorway. The Native Americans leave a small bit of an accent color, usually red, woven into the design of their rugs. This way, the spirit can enter. I see an empty canvas in the same way. It invites something to happen.

Carolyn

How we play.

About twenty years back I had a little office in the loft of a friends home and was on the verge of over-staying my welcome. I ventured out to find a work space, and knew I wouldn't find the typical office. There was something more I wanted to do, and I needed an empty space to play in, no matter what it was.

I rented a 2,500 square foot warehouse with big windows and huge sliding metal doors at two ends. It had been a furniture factory years before and had wonderful old redwood rafters with cross members and old hammered tie bolts. I remember that first day, standing in the space, wondering how to clean the grease spots from the previous motorcycle shop, off the cement floor. I wondered how in the world I'd convince my friends to help me clean the 60 foot passage way, up the side of the building, full of tree high blackberry bushes. And what would I do with this giant space when all I had ever needed before, was one drafting table. Had I really flipped out? I followed my intuition. Something new was about to happen.

That was my beginning of twelve years as an art furniture gallery and workshop owner. In those early years I would design interiors for my contract clients by day, and then stay up late at night painting on furniture, or sanding finishes off old pieces found in garage sales. My husband and I completed more than three thousand custom one-of-a-kind furniture pieces during those years, staging open receptions for three hundred people each month. It seems like a fog now, all those long days of running two businesses, but looking back, only one thing strikes me as the most relevant; how much fun we had!

With every new client one of the most serious questions I ask is: "How do you play?" If it becomes difficult to understand, or the question uncovers some form of uncertainty, then I usually have a difficult time proceeding. It usually means I have to find the tell-tale signs...and believe me; they are always there!

No matter what your occupation, no matter what your relationships, or your personal history, family dynamics, or present entanglement, everyone has a niche'.
If I am to be your designer worth my salt, then I must understand your temperament, your skills, your tendencies to spend time in a certain chair reading, or in the garage fixing, or in the garden digging, and so forth. If you can't deliver this information and if it's not carefully taken into consideration, then the job of designing can't begin.

Once these areas are considered and function designed for; the world opens up to many many possibilities few can ever imagine! I've seen it happen hundreds of times. The object is to discover 'how we play'....and then take the first step like I did and clean the grease off the cement floor!

Carolyn

A visual appetite.

When I was about fourteen, I tore a closet apart, painted the interior and set the objects I adored at the time, on the deep magenta walls. The space was about 4' by 4' square with a lovely window from my second floor perch. My view overlooking the branches of a 50'redwood tree next door, made me feel as if I was like a bird in a nest. I would sit for long stretches of time looking into those branches imagining what other people saw from their windows. I would sit on my fur covered plank of wood on stacked books, admiring my new curtain of beads between me and the room that needed tending or the chores I was expected to do downstairs.

I used to wonder what people did, when they couldn't find a place like mine. I wondered if other people could see how a visual haven reduces the stress of the world outside.

Sometimes I would change the light bulbs, light candles and put fresh flowers into empty tin cans. I somehow knew at that time, life would always offer me these pleasantries. But what about other people? What did they do to have this much fun?


I see grace in 'being there' when things come together, and sometimes, in fact most times, quite by chance. Some might say it's 'circumstance', the way objects land a certain way on the table, in the course of a day. I'm always amazed and enchanted with the way they do, and can't help playing with them. Which brings me to my next question about design:

Isn't being a designer finding out how other people play, before designing for them?

Carolyn

Subtle conversation.

Once one article comes together with another, you've invited a kind of 'conversation' between them. The more subtle the better, in my opinion. It makes no difference what items they are or what you are developing, how many there are, or what your intent is; articles speak to one another.

As an example, let's take the project of a toothbrush storage from my last post. We start with a toothbrush we enjoy picking up (a good challenge!). It fits our hand. The bristles work well. The color and design suits us.

I select a bright taxi yellow one with fine candy stripes of emerald green and cherry red. I fill a glass tumbler with transparent marbles of the same emerald color and stick the brush into it. This works, as the liquid goes to the bottom and the brush handle stays dry. Then I paint a long 5" block of color down the wall behind the tumbler, say a stretched rectangle of pale yellow. From a chrome towel rod, I hang a dark cherry colored towel near by. The dialogue could be called 'color and stripes'. Even the slickness of the glass marbles and the lanquered handle of the brush have a textural conversation.

To me, the most fun with design is to start with things you love. Then watch the conversation develop as you add to these items. Watch the serendipity of circumstance as other items are brought out of their hiding places in your home, and work with others. The same can happen while shopping; the perfect object presents itself. Always start with what you love, and the rest will fall into place.

Finally your design dialogue is in the everyday moving of objects around your space, creating various collections as they present themselves. You need not be cluttered to get this result. Remember- it only takes two objects to have a conversation!

Carolyn

The design of my world.

To answer my own question from the last post (which to me at least claims the responsibility of working out the kinks of my world before going out on a mission to alter other worlds) unearths my next question; What do I imagine my world to look like?

This may sound presumptuous, as if we always knows what we want. Perhaps one might ask: "What if you simply don't know...?"

What works right now and what doesn't?... may be a start.....

Some of my world, in a design sense, could be old habit. The way my toothbrush always sits in a glass with the toothpaste tube. I seldom question it, although I'm not fond of cleaning the glass every so often. The glass does fit conveniently in the chrome ring mounted on the wall, so for the moment it works. I consider the toothpaste water dripping down the handle of the brush, into the glass. I might choose another way.

The desire for change hatching.

Am I grossing you out? Good. Look around. You've got corners too. A new way of handling a toothbrush invites me to explore. The solution may not be those cups with holes at the bottom (same cleaning dilemma) or at least not until other solutions float in an out of my nogin.

Did you ever wonder why the expression 'out of the box' took so long to emerge and what's inside anyway? Maybe it pays to rip the box apart and jam the entire contents into the paper shredder. Then tie the shreddings together with string and talk about the contents. I like 'think inside the box that never was.'

-Carolyn

Questions

Welcome to my first post. I like to stretch the concept of what 'interior design' means to most people. Does it start and stop at the doors of your home or establishment? What does it do for your life and how do you grow with it? Isn't design a way to live and not something done for you? I believe it's a way to engage others, heal our anxieties, prompt ideas, fuse relationships and maybe best of all, generate questions.

I call myself a site designer because I see living with design, as working with many sites and breaking the rules whenever possible.

Your garage is a site, and I might prefer to work in your garage with you if that's where you like to spend time. No, I won't mess with your tools, or your packed Christmas boxes, but have you ever thought of painting chalk board paint on one wall? Then you could draw plans with a piece of chalk, for that table you want to create or a road map of your summer vacation? Use more than one color chalk for sure!

Or install a pulley and tray for drinks from the kitchen? Or float a mirror over your workbench to reflect natural light from a sole window at the back of your space? Relax....design is not about spending money (another topic someday) but it is about expansion. It's about spreading your tired wings so the air lifts you up and you can imagine well!

Let's start with the most basic question:

If you could ask one question about the design of your world, what would it be?

-Carolyn