Recently Completed

Corners Tavern, Walnut Creek

Spring Blooms Eternal on Pierce and Noe

Pierce Street

Noe Street

Kitchen, Hallway, Glimpse of LR

For this 1940s marina style house, the client asked for: comfortable, classic, modern, funky, traditional, old, welcoming, pretty, bold and soft. The house was painted tan throughout when I arrived. Dark walnut floors, quite a refreshing treat from the usual red oak parquet found in homes of this period, allowed me a great range of temperature in the colors. Pictured are C2-013 Don Cesar, C2-346 Shaker 150%, and PPC-GRN16 Mariposa Spring. Trim and ceiling are C2-416 Lumen. “Man Room” is C2-483 Shale.

LR Detail

The pink color on the walls, Don Cesar, feels at once spritely, intriguing, calm and sophisticated. Most interestingly, it functions as a neutral backdrop for a wide range of colors in the house: black, white, linen, cherry red, yellow, green, and even blue.

"Man Room" in Progress

Victoria Street Woodworker’s Dream

Victoria Street

This beautiful, hand-built house was originally pale yellow and beige. The new owners wanted to transform its wedding cake feel while preserving an air of fable: a sort of sophisticated story book.

Philip’s Perfect Colors- G16 Sea Cliff  (body)

Ann Hall 197 (trim)

Pratt & Lambert 9-18 Cypress Earth (sashes)

C2-486 Mistral (door)

Victoria Street Detail

Guerrero North Shingled Victorian

Before

Philip’s Perfect Colors G18 Greyhound 150% (body)

Philip’s Perfect Colors G16 Sea Cliff (body II)

C2-346 Shaker (trim)

C2-168 Plantain (underhang & doors)

C2-353 French Roast (accents)

Guerrero South

Guerrero South

Pratt & Lambert 25-20 Wolf (body)

Pratt & Lambert 10-31 Meerschaum (trim)

Pratt & Lambert 29-17 Confidential (accents)

Pratt & Lambert 5-16 Scarlet O’Hara (doors)

Diamond Street

Diamond St.

Detail

23rd Street Landmark Circa 1880

North-facing Landmark Victorian

For this North-facing Victorian the owners had chosen an incandescent yet mellow lemony yellow for the body: C2-156 Limerick. They wanted a cheery and luminous color for an exposure that can feel cold and dim. I was called in because they were completely stumped on the accent colors. Everything they tried made this petite facade look like a carnival. Our aim was to highlight this lovely landmark from the 1860s without over-dressing. For the main trim I chose C2-418 Rolling Stone; highlights are in Philip’s Perfect Colors B8 Winter Grass; recessed elements are in C2-167 Sanguine; window sashes and door are in C2-049 Raku. Rather than use gold leaf for the decorative features, which I thought would detract from our lovely yellow, I suggested platinum or silver.  In terms of color selection relative to placement, the secondary accents, Sanguine and Winter Grass are green and champagne-colored respectively; the idea here being to accentuate the verticality of the woodwork by minimizing strong contrast on the horizontal plane. The highest contrast colors (Rolling Stone and Raku) are placed on the vertical elements. As a side note, this color combination would probably not be appropriate for a Southern or Western exposure. Certain yellow and red pigments are inherently a bit more vulnerable to sunlight regardless of the high quality of the paint.

Accentuate the Vertical

Octavia Street Transformation

Ocatvia Before

Octavia After

Octavia Colors

 PPC-G18 Greyhound (body)

PPC-W2 Butterfly White (trim)

PPC-GRN13 Parisian Green (accent I)

PPC-B12 Paper Bag Brown (accent II)

C2-465 Muddy Waters (base)

Modern Masters Warm Silver (eggs)

Octavia Detail I

Deep Impact

Come into my parlor...

!Viva!

Design Must Consider Every Angle

I recently completed a design for someone who had experienced a dramatic change of events. In a fairly low lit Victorian in the Mission the walls had been painted very dark and stately colors. There was a heaviness in a majority of the house that needed to be lifted. The client frequently travels to Mexico and the house is adorned with textiles from all over that country. We used rich, relatively (to what they were certainly and then some) saturated colors, and lightened the value (light/dark ratio) of the house-our deepest color being some fifty percent lighter than the previous darkest color. In this picture you can see Philip’s Perfect Colors G4 Steeley (a deep blue-green grey) in the hallway, leading into Pratt and Lambert’s 30-6 Delicate Petal (a strong violet pastel) in the dining room, and C2-092 Tomfoolery (a cantaloupe orange) peeking out from the kitchen. As an aside, I would like to comment that straight men from outside the United States, or those from here with affinities for the exogenic, in my experience, have virtually no gender associations with color; that is to say, they have no qualms about a beautiful lilac dining room.

Clash of the Titans

Electric Kool-Aid Media Room

There is a certain beauty in frisson: in this case, colors tensely vibrating together; on the precipice of ugliness lies an intense  and mysterious beauty. The color on the wall is C2-150 Curry.

Other Avenues

Produce Corner Before

When I first moved to the Outer Sunset I practically begged this fabulous neighborhood coop to let me do a color consultation. Several years later, when they were in a position to take action-this being a cooperative, things take a good amount of time-I was finally contacted to design the color. Several worker-owners commented on the chaotic inhumanity of the space: “Please save us from the psychological stress!” I understood this completely. The space felt like a warehouse: completely white walls and ceilings. For the worker-owners,  there was insufficient stimulation and energy to sustain them while they worked. For the customers, a completely white environment not only delivered a blank experience but also a chaotic navigational experience; simply stated, it was very difficult to see or find anything in the store because it was devoid of any color “landmarks.”

Start Your Engines

Produce Corner After

Both customers and workers are thrilled and buoyed by the changed environment. Customers have commented on the colors themselves, but more often on the palpable change in energy in the store, without necessarily noticing the colors. One of the neurological effects of colors is creating homeostasis: in a completely white environment, devoid of stimulation, human beings often will create internal stimulation to compensate, thereby creating agitated mental and psychological states. Sufficient stimulation, on the other hand, can create  a sense of both peace  and sustained energy.

Where are the Bulk Spices?

The Bulk Spices

The house to the right originally appeared in the book House Colors as an example of Mediterranean color. The owner had copied the colors from a house he admired, but once those colors were on his house, he realized they were not right for him. He showed me his back patio that was adorned with glass tiles he had found in the Amalfi region of Italy. I decided to lighten the overall feel of the house: I chose Ann Hall 146 for the body ( sunnier with less ochre than the original) and PPC G4-Steeley for the base (a bluer and glassier green than might be considered traditional-to echo the glass of his back patio). I also changed the white, which I

Mediterranean Uplift

felt was too stark and too yellow, to C2-349 Linger, a soft, almost rosy marble white that I think is more harmonious with the actual marble of the foyer. Garage and side door are matched to the wine red of the clad window sashes. The effect is, I hope, a gentle riff on both Mediterranean  style and the primary color triad.

Primary Colors

In a Marina style house in Noe Valley organic design forces conspired to allow me to employ the three primary colors together but shifted: each color was not quite true. Instead of true blue, I used turqoise; instead of true red, flamingo.

C2-143 Ecru ("yellow") + C2-044 Flamingo ("red") +

C2-235 Salty Brine ("blue") = Perfect Color Triad

Lake Street (Before)

Lake Street (After)

Lake Street (Detail)

And on the interior front…

View From the Nouveau Louis XVI Dining Room

C2-343 Rickshaw non-reflective flat (ceiling)

C2-368 Serene 75% satin (trim)

View From the Ineffable Living Room

PPC-V1 Dusk matte (walls)

PPC-G14 Dakon Gray eggshell (shelf inset)

C2-368 Serene 75% satin (trim)

C2-343 Rickshaw + C2-368 Serene non-reflective flat (ceiling)

MID-CENTURY PAS DE DEUX

To further illustrate my “invisibility,” here are two recently completed interior designs for two Mid-Century houses, very similar architecturally and each residing atop a hill in San Francisco.

Art Collectors in Forest Hills

This family has an amazing and diverse art collection, which it was their express desire to highlight. The couple has very young children so they also requested a design that was functional and easy maintain; I therefore used very few (4) colors in this 2 bedroom house, not including ceilings and trim.  For the living room and master bedroom we used Philip’s Perfect Colors B4 Beachwood, a shimmering full spectrum beige that I recently used on an exterior. This color not only is a rich and flexible backdrop to the couple’s collection, but it also contains just enough red to balance their predominately though subtley green furnishings. For the foyer we chose C2-235 Slaty Brine, a slightly dusky yet energizing torquoise.

Self-Proclaimed Non-Art Collectors in Golden Gate Heights

This couple had just bought their house from a family of art collectors who had painted the house pretty much beige everywhere. Now let me be clear, I do not think that beiges and whites are necessarily the  best backdrops for artwork in a residential or non-museum setting. (For fascinating colors used in a museum please visit the De Young Museum some time.) As with many design choices, it depends. In any case, this couple requested that the walls be their artwork, since they had very few actual pieces. We used 15 colors in this 2 bedroom house. Some were sublte and some not so much. In the above picture  there are 7 colors.

A Study in Gold of a Golden Study

Above is another room in the same Mid-Century house. Alternating planes of color move you throughout the house, like walking inside a painting. I took very different design goals and applied them to similar architecture. I hope they are equally beautiful and inspiring to their inhabitants and seamlessly dovetail into who they are as people and personalities: again, I hope I have “disappeared.”

A DUCK’S TALE

The large Tudor I was working on is finally done. Though I often gravitate towards dramatic changes (since you are going about the trouble to paint…), here the owner wanted a rejuvenating facelift: “Make it look younger!” she implored. I stayed close to the original colors in that I chose a beige and chocolate brown (PPC Beachwood and C2 Chocolate Therapy) however, the beauty and complexity of the color formulation, particularly the shimmery full spectrum Beachwood, made a huge difference in “lightening” the feel of such a large and erstwhile imposing home, gargoyles and all. We added some “dainty” details, too.

Living Large

Her Beloved Duck