At High Point Market I had two very different experiences dining out. The restaurant below is in The Proximity hotel where a few of us had dinner the second night I arrived. We walked into this serene, beautiful space with fabric panels dividing the restaurant into sections, oval backed slipped chairs in green and white with the early evening light filtering into the room. Simple, elegant, divine. If I had heard angels singing I would not have been surprised.
Then I had the opposite experience in another restaurant when Traci Zeller, Laura Casey and I arrived for the Editor at Large presentation at lunch.
I’m guessing whoever designed this space probably did it this way (below) intentionally. You might love it! I'm just not a big fan of Halloween or decor that reminds me of this day.
In Vancouver we have a restaurant called Hell’s Kitchen (below). The exterior is bright screaming yellow and black, and this one could very well have had the same name.
This is such a perfect space to show you clean and dirty colours that I couldn’t resist snapping photos as soon as I sat down. My biggest issue with the colours in this space was that there is zero relationship between the decor of the restaurant and the wall colour. And the chosen red and orange screamed way too primary and bright.
Personally, I felt disturbed sitting in this space, the right red (way more toned down and muted than this one) would have at least not clashed so badly with the chairs, stone wall and urns in the dining room. But then walking down the halls to the restroom was a whole other experience!
Now with the black concrete floors and the red walls there was no relief from the Halloween themed feeling!
Photos by Maria Killam
The biggest mistake designers and homeowners make with colour is in the clean and dirty category (given that all colour is defined either, cool or warm, clean or dirty, light or dark). When a reader emails me a photo because they have a room bothers them and they need to know why, simply understanding how to mix clean and dirty colours accurately is the fix in many cases. This doesn’t mean you should not mix clean and dirty colours but it should never happen by accident because that’s usually when it looks bad.
A good place to learn how to combine colours accurately is in my course (I know it’s the perfect plug for my True Colour Expert Workshops). But these kinds of colour mistakes are expensive!
Happy Halloween Everyone!
If you would like your home to fill you with happiness every time you walk in, contact me for on-line or in-person decorating and colour.
Related posts:
A Dirty Answer to a Clean Question
The Difference between an Experienced Colourist and a Novice
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