Paint colors. One of my favorite things, since I specify color for a living. And the majority of my color specification is for residential housing. While looking around on the ‘net this evening, I found this fun article by Sheila Moss about painting a home purple and the implications. (Make sure you follow ALL of the links in the article for the full effect!) http://www.humorcolumnist.com/purplehouse.htm
What do you, dear reader, think about purple houses? I would have to say that it depends on the house…Unfortunately, some towns have regulations about what colors you can paint your house, which seems awfully silly. I haven’t encountered these ordinances as of yet but have encountered those “homeowner’s associations”, which need something better to do I believe. I like to think that if someone wanted a purple house and hired me to help, I’d make it work for them. By “make it work”, I mean do what I always do: create an attractive color design that not only also fits the personality of the house and its owner but also works in the neighborhood. Mainly this means that I make sure the new paint colors don’t match the neighboring homes and quite possibly harmonize with them a bit. You see, my goal is to help you figure out what you like and create some kind of color scheme that is pleasing to you and fits your home, if that’s what you want. If I had a client that insisted in creating a bizarre color scheme just to piss of his neighbors, then, I might think twice. Unless I was going to be paid extra to not say anything. :) Then again, I believe in both freedom of self-expression as well as keeping the world safe from visual pollution. It might be a contradiction to do both, but I feel both are important. Being an IACC color consultant compels me to make sure I don’t make any color schemes that are too chaotic or the other extreme, under stimulating. But this doesn’t exclude purple. It means purple can be applied in the right context. Same with pink. Or periwinkle blue. Or salmon orange. So, yes I can do purple. I’ll make sure it comes out in such a way so that when folks drive by your house they exclaim: “Wow, look at that cool purple house!” After all, bad taste is in the eye of the beholder sometimes.
~reb