Colours for a classy chic interior

[NormanTodd]

I want to do some interior works done in my new apartment and planning to do it with this team of professional builders in Essex. I want to make it look classy and chic, so maybe you guys have any tips for this? I’m mainly concerned about the colours I should use in my interior. It’ll be a great help if you can suggest the best colours/shades I should use. Thanks in advance.

 

[MikeG.]

Welcome to the forum.

How about posting some photos of the interior you are decorating? I mean, clay paints are a thing at the moment, but all design decisions should be based on context. This is a woodworking and metalworking forum, but I'm sure we're up for a Farrow & Ball vs Dulux battle.

 

[ED65]

Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:

If you haven't picked out all your furnishings yet paint your walls sable [his pretentious word for beige] because as a neutral it will complement any future choices.

Never mind that beige is not actually a neutral.

Random Modernist from any time in the last 50 years:

You want white walls and a white ceiling, and black flooring. Classic combo, and neutrals go with anything.

The second sentence is true, but this combo is obviously far too stark for many people for a living space they actually use.

Interior designer who's a Farrow & Ball fan:

Combine Green Smoke with French Gray [because they're flavour of the month] for drama any time of the day or night.

Ignore that F&B wilfully miss-spell grey, the egregious thing is that it's a green!

See what I'm getting at?

At the end of the day colour choices are entirely subjective. What you and yours like is really the only thing that should drive your decisions, which make suggestions from others of dubious usefulness. If you like big patterns and want to use William Morris wallpaper in the WC under the stairs who's to tell you otherwise?

Bright teals/turquoises are currently (or five minutes ago) very in vogue. While I love this hue (I've used a dull teal as my desktop colour in Windows for more than a decade) I wouldn't want a whole room in a vivid teal; not even sure if I could live with it on an accent wall TBH. But if you do an image search you'll see there are plenty of interiors which have full-on teal ceilings, making the colour impossible to get away from.

Which leads on to my warning against being too on-trend. If you go with something that's currently bang-on trend chances are it'll soon be outdated. Remember the glossy red kitchen cabinets a while back? As the gent in a kitchen place told me, they couldn't give the remaining red stock away only a couple of years later.

 

[Glynne]

Excellent advice from ED65.
There are a lot of Apps that you can get whereby you take a photo of your room and can then experiment with different colurs to see what it looks like. I have "Paint Tester" on an iPad which is a free app.
I used when my wife was interested in having feature walls in a through lounge / dining room and whilst its not perfect, it is a lot easier than colour charts and tester pots.

 

[John Brown]

There's no such thing as "classy and chic", objectively. This year's chic is next year's avocado bathroom suite.
Today's chic is tomorrow's chit.

That's why I stick to Dreadnought Grey.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Don't pick colours like this post1328621.html#p1328621
and expect other people to like them.

 

[HappyHacker]

Excellent advice above. As a 70yr old who is hopeless with colours I will not offer any advice on colour schemes, but having lived through many iterations of the latest "on trend" themes and having implemented many of them, anyone remember mink bathroom fittings? I have also built a red kitchen in the distant past. I can say don't go with what ever is currently on trend as it won't be tomorrow. You say you want classic chic then I would recommend looking at photos in old glossy magazines and select colours that you like and can live with without going for all the pretentious stuff.

Some paint shops will make up F&B colours using normal paints, I doubt that you will be able to tell the difference apart from in your pocket.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Yes, there's a far better chance of yesterday's colours being tomorrow's than of today's colours being tomorrow's.

 

[sammy.se]

Simple answer: Greys, whites and very light browns

More long winded answer:

Couple of things:
1/ Start a mood board/pinterest board. Pin ideas and colours that you like. Don't think too much about it, just what you like.
2/ Aim to have a background colour for a room/area, then the colour of your biggest furniture (e.g. sofa, cupboards etc), and one accent colour. I would recommend that your main colour is light and neutral. Off-white or grey is good. I would avoid magnolia. Your accent colour is your choice!! it can be bold or subtle, but it should be sparse around the room. You can use this colour for your lamp shades, soft furnishings or picture frames etc. (Brass is very in at the moment)
3/ Furniture colours: Do you already own the sofa and furniture? if yes, you may have to think about what colour they are now and what will go well with them (post some pics). Most people buy/have furniture first, then decorate a room (it should ideally be the other way around, but not everyone has that luxury)
4/ Buy some lining paper, and paint it the colours you are considering for your walls. Don't paint the sample directly on the wall. Why? Because with lining paper, you can move it around the room and see how it looks on different walls, catching the different light. Also, place it where walls join (fold the sample so that it is on both walls). Place it behind your furniture to see how it looks. Check the colours in the day and at night. Stuff looks different in different light.
5/ Lighting is really important. if builders are involved, I would be thinking much more about where lights will be placed, rather than the colours (for now). Lights on the ceiling are usually not the best place. Consider having multiple light options for a room, e.g. wall lights, ceiling lights, spot lights, etc. so that you have options at night and during the day. Where will you have lamps? make sure sockets are there.

Hope this helps.

 

[sammy.se]

just one or two more things:

6/ think about how you will use the space - one room doesn't mean one space. E.g. you may have a home office, that is in the same physical room as your bedroom room, for example. You can still define that space, using light, colours or furniture. This will help you design.
7/ Have walk through the space and decide where you want things. I know it sounds pretentious, but literally walk through your door and think about what you want to see, where you want to put your keys, you shoes, then where you want to sit etc.

 

[will1983]

Don't pick colours like this post1328621.html#p1328621
and expect other people to like them.

Well that is very rude. I would not have expected something like to have come from you Phil.

I respect that everyone has a different opinion on what the find appealing but the phrase "if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all" springs to mind.

 

[ED65]

This year's chic is next year's avocado bathroom suite.

Perfect example!

Off-topic, I could never quite get my head around the naming of that colour avocado. It almost always seemed to be a sort of olive green (and sometimes more olive drab!) than any colour I'd associate with an avocado. No different to the "aubergine" things I've seen over the years, not a one of which was even close to the actual colour of an aubergine.

It's all marketing of course. I don't see the problem with calling something e.g. Dusky Purple or Ashy Violet which are just as evocative IMHO and, at least as importantly I would have thought, give a much better impression of what the buyer is actually going to get.

...anyone remember mink bathroom fittings?

Have to admit I liked those! Not sure if I'd have tired of them either, as the colour would harmonise with a lot of different tiling and paint options.

Some paint shops will make up F&B colours using normal paints, I doubt that you will be able to tell the difference apart from in your pocket.

Quite so. There's a reasonable chance the paints wouldn't be materially that much different either! Not that F&B's marketing department wouldn't be very insistent to the contrary of course.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Don't pick colours like this post1328621.html#p1328621
and expect other people to like them.

Well that is very rude. I would not have expected something like to have come from you Phil.

I respect that everyone has a different opinion on what the find appealing but the phrase "if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all" springs to mind.

The OP is discussing choosing colours - it wasn't rude, it was a perfectly reasonable observation. Just because someone liked it it doesn't follow every one will. What colours you pick affects the desirability of your property if you're intending to sell in the near future - if I looked at a house with that in it I'd expect the price dropped to allow for its probably being ripped out. Nice work - I wasn't criticising the work, just the colour.

 

[will1983]

I appreciate the sentiment regarding the workmanship but I maintain that your post was particularly rude and misguided.
There are many ways of demonstrating your point without placing the work of another member of the forum in a derogatory light simply because you don't like it.

The fact that you don't like it is irrelevant. It isn't your home. You didn't commission the work. You didn't do the work. You didn't go to work to pay for it. You aren't buying their home.

As a side note, asking someone to drop the asking price of their home because you don't like the colour of something in it is ridiculous, would you do that for the colour of the walls? The shade of the carpet? The pattern on the curtains? I doubt it. If you tried that in practice I think you would be given very short shift. As it happens the addition of this piece of fitted furniture has raised the value and marketability of their home.

If you don't like something that's your opinion but keep it to yourself and move on. Consider how your actions are perceived in future. The age of non-accountability on the Internet are gone.

 

[MikeG.]

This is like watching friends argue. I regard both of you two as "forum friends" and I don't like seeing you fall out. How about a pause and a little intake of breathe, fellas?

.......As a side note, asking someone to drop the asking price of their home because you don't like the colour of something in it is ridiculous, would you do that for the colour of the walls? The shade of the carpet? The pattern on the curtains? I doubt it........

I've had that exact thing happen to me with a house I was selling in Leicester. "Sorry, I don't like the hall carpet. I'm knocking X thousands off my offer to cover the cost of replacing it". This was decades ago, and I can't remember whether we sold it to them or not, nor what the reduction was, but I rather hope we didn't take their offer. I just remember the cheek of it.

 

[Chris152]

Random Modernist from any time in the last 50 years:

You want white walls and a white ceiling, and black flooring. Classic combo, and neutrals go with anything.

The second sentence is true, but this combo is obviously far too stark for many people for a living space they actually use.

All my walls and ceilings are white but it doesn't feel cold - you can add/ change colour with pictures/ artworks/ whatever. And it's really easy to cover up marks by keeping just one pot of the same paint. Wouldn't want the black floor tho - wooden floors look great against white. But I am another random modernist.

 

[lurker]

This is like watching friends argue. I regard both of you two as "forum friends" and I don't like seeing you fall out. How about a pause and a little intake of breathe, fellas?

.......As a side note, asking someone to drop the asking price of their home because you don't like the colour of something in it is ridiculous, would you do that for the colour of the walls? The shade of the carpet? The pattern on the curtains? I doubt it........

I've had that exact thing happen to me with a house I was selling in Leicester. "Sorry, I don't like the hall carpet. I'm knocking X thousands off my offer to cover the cost of replacing it". This was decades ago, and I can't remember whether we sold it to them or not, nor what the reduction was, but I rather hope we didn't take their offer. I just remember the cheek of it.

I wonder if it has a blue plaque now?

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Don't pick colours like this post1328621.html#p1328621
and expect other people to like them.

The post was not rude. I did not criticise the work (it's one sentence, and not a difficult one to read) - I'd like to think I could work to that standard - I merely made the observation that colours like that don't suit everyone and that there is a reason for not using them. I criticised only the customer's choice of colour - which as yet I don't believe is a crime, and for which I feel under no obligation to apologise.

 

[Brandlin]

... asking someone to drop the asking price of their home because you don't like the colour of something in it is ridiculous, would you do that for the colour of the walls? The shade of the carpet? The pattern on the curtains? I doubt it. If you tried that in practice I think you would be given very short shift.

Err ... that's EXACTLY why estate agents write entire books on how to present your home, and why 'designers' have been able to make entire TV series' out of "dressing your house to sell. Buyers do it ALL the time!

 

[MikeG.]

As for me, gray is always a good choice. Let us know what you chose. It would be interesting to see.

In Hornsby, that's grey. Unless there is a Hornsby in the USA.