Monday, March 3, 2008

Is Yellow The New Beige?




I moved into an old house a few years ago that was used as a home for wayward girls. Every room was painted in deep hideous colors with bible sayings and tie dye wall paper borders. Every room except one, which I think was used as a parlor for Sunday visits.
After re-painting the entire house, by the time we got to the parlor, we were pooped, and decided to just leave it for the time being.
It was painted a nice yellow.
I have never had a yellow room.
I have admired yellow rooms, especially yellow living rooms done in the English style, all prince of chintz cheerful.
Strangely enough, most of the furniture and curtains we owned looked good in the yellow room.
It's three years later, and I still haven't come up with another color I like better for this room.
The mail came today with the new PB catalog, and voila my yellow living room is in vogue for the moment! Is yellow the new beige? The new neutral?


2 comments:

  1. I'm guessing as this was posted March /08, your room is still yellow? I only used it once in an laundry room area and found it to be a very uplifting color. (Made the chore less tedious..smiles.)

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  2. Well, here I am back from the future again. And we all know what happened to that room by now, don't we? It grew up and HOW.

    I do like yellow, black and white together, especially with toile, but I can't live with yellow wall for long. In the late 90's we lived in a 1947 cottage with hardwood floors. I painted our little dining room a warm, buttery yellow. Sort of a deep Italian yellow. At that time I was drooling over all the yellow, blue, and white rooms in the mags and on HGTV. I just HAD to have it, so I made poor Jeff help me paint in time for Thanksgiving, then I made curtains and recovered the seats on our dining chairs to coordinate. It was a gorgeous color, but within a few weeks I was sick of it. I didn't dare tell Jeff because he didn't want to re-paint it to begin with. So, I waited until he went out of town on business, then busted my rear getting it all repainted again. A white called "driftwood" with a soft gray-green accent wall. I ended up painting our fireplace wall in the living room the same color. It was beautiful and I loved it up until we moved away. I still lick my lips at warm, buttery yellow walls in the right places, but only for short spurts of time. Now ochres, honeys and golds? No problemo!

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