Designer-Elise Kodish

The nice folks at the National Kitchen and Bath Association (NKBA) have done a huge survey with their members and spotted 10 new trends for the market for 2012

Cherry, Maple and Alder, which have dominated the market in Kitchen and Bath Cabinets since the turn of the century, have seen a sharp drop in popularity. Medium to dark stains and finishes are starting to take over with woods like Oak, Birch and Walnut becoming the cabinet materials of choice.

This is so much easier than it was 20 years ago when everybody wanted their dark, walnut-stained oak cabinets pickled with just a “simple wipe of white stain”. At least, some idiot said that on a DIY network so it became truth through simple repetition. It’s easy to make a light wood darker with glazes and almost impossible to make it lighter without stripping the old finishes first. A project I enjoy as much as digging ditches and licking an old telephone pole.

In painted finishes, White continues to dominate the market with other colors being picked about a third of the time. Distressed finishes, which had fallen off to about 5% of specified kichen finishes last year, have recently surged back to 22%. Go baby go!

For the first time since the NKBA started to track national trends, Traditional style kitchens no longer dominate the market. Now the word is Transitional, which is a blend of Traditional and Contemporary. People just don’t want to fully jump into the simple lines of Contemporary style but want to soften the look with a few curves and/or elaborations of Traditional. Full Contemporary is next most popular followed by Shaker, Arts and Crafts and Cottage styles of Kitchen and Bath cabinetry.

Designer-Elise Kodish

Make sure you have platinum-colored metallic textures in your portfolio as well as decorative plasters with very little movement. Marmorinos and Anticos are excellent for this and are increasingly being called for.

Color Schemes

Shades of gray are again pulling ahead in Kitchens and Baths as well as the rest of the house. Whites and off-whites continue to be the most popular colors as well as bone and beiges. After Gray, Bronzes and Terra Cottas are the next popular choices followed by Greens and then Blues. Try juxtaposing a bright, cheerful color with the gray but keep it around 15-20% of the area

Other trends involve glass backsplashes and counters, faucets and concrete and natural stone countertops. For the full article, read it here: NKBA Kitchen and Bath Trends

The color prognosticators see warmer blues (towards violet) juxtiposed with stark whites coming back along with burnt oranges as a wake-up color (think rust).

Natural palette colors will continue to be the easiest sell with soft luster metallics like pearl for a contemporary and elegant flair. Try a metallic texture in the same color as the walls for a subtle accent.

Natural-looking and “green” materials have enjoyed a resurgence as “Old World” finishes have died off. Weaves and striaes using textures are big sellers but be sure to keep the millage or thickness to a minimum for easy reversibility.

It probably doesn’t need to be said but I’ll say it anyways: Kill the word “faux” off your advertising. Le Monde in NY City have decided “faux painting” is dated and common. Two words that are death to fashion.

Damask patterns and harlequin repeats are great for making long hallways more cozy. They will also dress up an accent wall. Keep them subtle and faded. Put a light glaze over them or cover them in patches of glass beads for an over-the-top look.

I have never found much use for trends and fads in colors but it is always good to sound like you know what is “in”. The above opinions are my own and are to be taken with a grain of salt.

C2 Handcrafted Designer colors. Only 500 colors but 500 usable colors.

Ives Color Circle

Right click on image and “save picture as”

Since the beginning of my career, I have always looked at and used the mis-tint stacks of house paint at paint stores.  I could buy premium paint for pennies on the dollar and usually get one close enough to the color I wanted to be able to easily adjust it with pigments or with other paint.   The more I understood color and paint, the more options opened up for me.   Reusing leftover paint by adjusting the color with complements and secondary colors follows the same basic rules as pointed out in The Keys to Color or in any book on color theory.  You can make beautiful light grays, beiges and taupes as well as browns, golds and drab greens with almost any combination of colors.  The only thing you generally can’t make is bright colors; but complex, de-saturated and earthy hues are what we use in homes anyway.              

All latex and acrylic house paints (as of 2010) are intermixable.  Of course, only use paint that is in good condition and without mold.  You can strain out any lumps in old paint with a nylon stocking or strainer bag from the paint store.

  I mainly use paint as a base for glazes so final sheen is not too important as long as I have some sheen.  A gloss paint mixed with a flat makes a semi to satin gloss, a semi-gloss paint mixed with a flat makes a satin and so on.  All paint companies make their paint a little differently so exact ratios are impossible to give.  If a paint is a little too shiny, add a quart of flat.  If it is too flat, add a pint or more of sheened paint until you get to the right sheen.  When you have the right amount for the job at hand, then you can work on the color.

Always make sure you have enough paint to complete the entire job because it is very hard to exactly match a paint color that has eight or more pigments.  Even if you won’t have enough to complete the job, you can still use your leftover paint for a first coat that is close to the color you want.  Then buy enough of the right color to apply the second coat.

Over the years, I have found that designers were always drawn to the colors I made with a variety of paint colors, not just the simple formulas.  That is what convinced me that I am on the right track when I write about the beauty of complex and full-spectrum colors in homes rather than the simple colors foisted off on us by most paint companies.  You will have a lot of fun discovering new colors and derive satisfaction from using up all those old cans of paint.

As an added bonus, you will feel good knowing that you will be keeping gallons of paint out of the waste stream. 

When people used to see me rooting around the mistint paint bins, they called me frugile.  Now I am earth friendly and totally PC ! 

*http://www.productstewardship.us/

Beige

 Beige is a problematic color for walls in that no two people will agree on exactly what it is.   It can be the most docile of neutrals and it can be as insipid as a flesh tone.  Beige is used as a neutralizing hue in between stronger hues but most often it is used as a safe compromise.

The many names of beige include; latte, tan, sand, buff, cream, oatmeal, biscuit, ecru, mushroom, manila.  Not to forget the made-up names such as Manchester cliffs, Mohave Desert,  Coffee Cream, etc., off the top of my head.

Some people see it as a cream… 

While others see it as dark as ecru… 

Beige is usually made with white as the major pigment, then yellow oxide for a base color, then adjusted with small amounts of raw umber and/or burnt umber, black, red oxide, violet, etc.   The yellow could also be raw sienna or hansa yellow.  Raw sienna keeps it calm while hansa yellow has a tendency to give beige a lemony cast.

It is difficult to show a proper beige on a web-based computer screen because the earth pigments in beige REFLECT light in a special way but the pixels you see on a computer screen ARE light.  Ditto with printed color cards.  The ink used has only 3 transparent /organic pigments to work with and paint stores use opaque oxide pigments to color the paint.  See Chapters 5 & 6 for more info.

 Beige changes considerably with the type of light it reflects.  So much so that you may think it’s a different color from wall to wall!  

The light that comes in through a window will reflect off the floor and then on to the wall giving that  particular wall a cast that may be objectionable.  Then at night, with incandescent light, the walls will reflect warm light in proportion so that all the beige walls will turn pinkish!  Let me show you how to “fix” the problem without having to buy a different color.   

To fix Beige – Beige is an ambiguous warm neutral color that can be as light as an off-white up to a mid-tone value.  It will leans towards yellow/ gold or pink. 

Objections – beige will frequently have either a pinkish or yellowish cast that comes out over a large area.  Beige is rarely too cool because it would then be taupe.

Use the Color Kit sold here or Golden Fluid Acrylics

How to fix a Beige that is too Pink 

– To a quart of paint, add 10 drops of yellow pigment and 1 drop green (to make green/yellow)

A beige can be too yellow or warm

 To a quart of paint, add 6 drops of magenta pigment and 1 drop blue (to make violet)

Using these simple pigments, you can adjust the beige color over to what you want, without making the color darker.

My favorite way to make beige is to color white paint with raw sienna and raw umber.  Or color a glaze with, in descending order,  titanium white, raw sienna and raw umber.  With these simple pigments, you can make a perfectly neutral beige that is never too pink or too yellow.

The perception of color is a highly personal experience. It can be influenced by one’s emotional state, the quality of your vision, different types of color blindness, life experiences etc.  Perception of color however, does follow physical laws and that depends completely on the nature of light.

Color has no physical existence. Only under the presence of light can color even exist. Therefore color is influenced by the type of light, the quality and quantity of light and by the light reflected off adjacent surfaces. Rooms with a lot of natural light will look quite different from morning to dusk and then considerably different at night.

The type of light, ambient and artificial, used to illuminate a room is as important as the color(s) chosen for the architectural surfaces of a room.

Metamerism

Why does a chosen color, that seemed so perfect at the paint store, go “off” when applied to the walls of the target room? Or a color that matches perfectly in the studio change considerably at the worksite? Most often it is because the lights are different from where the selection of color is made, to where the color is installed.

This problem is called metamerism.

Metamerism is a phenomenon that occurs where colors change (color shift) when viewed in different light conditions.

The following swatches are the same color

Figure 2.1

Here is a list of various artificial and ambient light sources and the way they can affect colors.

Fluorescent lights have greatly improved over the years and there are many color temperatures now available. The new CFL (compact fluorescent light) bulbs are growing in popularity and quality and may soon replace incandescent bulbs. These can be bought in a variety of color temperatures.

Metamerism becomes most apparent when the color is chosen in a paint or hardware store, where the illumination is usually cool fluorescent for reasons of economy. These inexpensive cool/white store lights excel at illumination, but are poor in rendering color especially in the warm spectrum (reds, oranges, yellows).

That perfect beige you picked out in the store will shift to “pinkish” on your wall because of metamerism. You did not see the “pinkish” cast of the beige at the paint store because the cool fluorescent lights cancelled that hue.  The coolish Northern light coming in through a window makes the beige look perfect during the day but as soon as the warm incandescent lights come on… the pink pops out again.

Metamerism also increases with the number of pigments used to color a product. Because of this, most paint companies limit coloring their paints to a maximum of three pigments. Were you to take two colors that look exactly the same under one light, but one color has six different pigments and the other has three, the colors can change considerably when viewed under a different light.

Reflected Light

Be aware of the other colors in a room, as the light reflected off one colored surface will cast itself onto others. We see this most often during the day when the colors in the floor reflect on to the wall surfaces. Red seems to be a predominant color in expensive rugs and the pink cast it reflects will cause no end of problems when one is trying to pick or match a perfect beige or sage color. Natural red oak floors will also cast a pinkish glow to the walls during the day.

Tips:

• Check the color near a source of natural light (not direct sunlight).
• Leave a large sample (at least two square feet) of a color or sample in a room for at least a day so you or the customer can see how it looks as it goes through the complete cycle of lighting conditions.
• A good, natural Northern light is always best for picking and matching colors. For artificial light, try to use a “full spectrum, daylight balanced” lamp.
• Look at the colored surface through a tool like an empty paper towel tube. This will help isolate a color from the “noise” of other colors so you can see it more clearly.

Figure 2.5 - Candles 1,850k

Color Temperature and Color Rendering

These are two ways to measure the type of light and the quality that the light has in rendering color accurately.

Color Temperature

Color temperature is a standard way of measuring light color at its source. It is not a measurement of thermal degrees but a measurement along a scale corresponding to a Kelvin rating (K).

Figure 2.6 - Sunlight (Northern Window) 5,500K

Color temperature is the color appearance of the light  by a light bulb and the color appearance of the light bulb itself.

A lamp with a low color temperature will have a “warm” appearance (red, orange or yellow).

Conversely, a lamp with a high color temperature will have a “cool” appearance (blue or blue-white).

Think of the warm glow of a candle flame. It is not a very hot flame so the light it casts is warm or reddish in tone.

The filament of a halogen bulb burns much hotter so the light it casts is coolish in tone.

Figure 2.7 - Color Temperature Chart

2,000 K:                     Low pressure sodium lamps

2,600-2,800 K:         Tungsten (incandescent) lamps (ordinary household bulb whatever the power)

2,700 K:                      Warm white lamps

3,200-3,500 K:         Halogen and “daylight” lamps

4,000 – 4,600 K:      Cool white fluorescents

5,000 – 6,000 K:      Average daylight, electronic flash (can vary between manufacturers)

6,420 K:                       Xenon arc lamp

6,500 – 8,000 K:      Full daylight, blue sky

Warm versus Cool Colors

Color wheels are usually divided in half with warm colors on one side and cool colors on the other. Warm colors start with magenta and go to reds, oranges, primary yellow and everything in-between.

Figure 2.8

Cool colors start with violet and continue with all the blues, greens and up to lime yellow (yellow/green).

Figure 2.9

Warm versus cool is a matter of perceptionbecause, as you can see on the color temperature chart above (Figure 2.7), cool colors are actually hotter than the so-called warm colors. Think of the blue flame on a stove burner versus a yellow/orange candle flame. In northern climates, the perception comes from memories of the cool blue/grays of winter and the warm bright yellow/oranges of Spring and Summer. Closer to the equator, color is again perceived differently because the angle of the sun is more direct and the warm glow of orange diffuses the harshness of cool colors and softens the brightness of warm colors so that almost any mixture of colors reads as harmonious. The profusion of foliage also helps to complement colors. Think of a flower in the middle of dense leaves. People in the desert states, with sparse, dry wide-open spaces, often prefer beiges and neutrals because they blend into the environment without seeming to jar.

Color Rendering

The other part of light quality is color rendering. This is the ability of a lamp to render color accurately and to show color shade variations and contrast more clearly. High color rendition allows us to see objects as we would expect them to appear under natural sunlight.

Color rendition is measured via a complex process on the Color Rendition Index (CRI) scale ranging in value from 0 to 100, with higher values being those closest to natural, indirect sunlight.

You may have noticed in some parking lots at night that it is difficult to tell a blue car from a red car; this is because of the poor CRI of low sodium lamps.

Most old-style fluorescent lamps have a poor color rendering value of 55 – 65 which makes people’s complexions look gray/greenish. A cool white fluorescent may have a color temperature of 4,100K but a CRI of 62. With these lamps, you cannot easily see the difference between deep blue and deep green; reds look more purplish and pinky beiges look taupe.

Newer fluorescent and halogen lamps can have a very good CRI (up to 92) which reveal colors very accurately. The Ott-lite True Color™ line of lamps have a CRI of 90+ and have a very steady light that is restful to the eyes although they are rather low in wattage. Another brighter one is the BlueMax™ 42 watt work station lamp.  This is the one that I use when I work with color at night time.

Be wary of some “Full Spectrum” lighting systems. The term is currently used as a marketing device for expensive and ostensively healthy lights that have little scientifically proven value.

In summary, artificial light cannot be judged by a single number, i.e. color temperature. The ability of a light to show color, the CRI, is just as important, especially in color matching.

Ambient Light (Reflected Light)

The amount and direction of sunlight that enters a room will affect colors dramatically. Strong sunlight through a large window will reflect any color on the floor directly on to the walls and ceiling. This ambient light is probably the explanation for when we hear a client remark that they like a color in the morning but not in the afternoon or vice versa. This ambient light will change a white color to an off-white. The light coming through a sheer curtain will also color the room.

You may want to use a compass to determine the orientation of the room before you start color selection. Here are a couple of suggestions:

• Rooms with a northeastern exposure will benefit from warm colors since they receive little direct sunlight.
• The warm rays of the sun in a room with a southwest exposure may benefit from cool colors.

When the light changes from sunlight to tungsten and mixtures thereof, color will change correspondingly.

The light that comes in through windows will also change according to how high up the room is in a building. A room on the first floor and a room on the twenty-ninth floor will have not only a different quantity of light, but a different quality of light besides.  The first floor room will have a lot of light reflected from the ground and surrounding surfaces which will warm it. An upper level room will have unfiltered daylight that will cast a cool tone on surfaces.

In summary, since color is reflected light; the type, quantity, quality and direction of light used to look at a color is all important: that is how the hue will be perceived. You can pick a lamp bulb to harmonize a color scheme or even correct a wayward color. A warm cast can be made cool by switching from a 2,800K bulb to a 4,000K or higher value. A cool cast can be made warmer by switching to incandescent bulbs (for example). The exact rendering of a color can only be achieved using a light source with a high (85+) color rendering index and no reflecting colors. Because of metamerism, a color should be chosen using the same type of light (or close to it) under which it will be used.

The next two chapters will discuss how to adjust colors with pigments to compensate for this “color-shift”.

1 teaspoon            = 1/3 tablespoon or 1/6 ounce

3 teaspoons           = 1 tablespoon or 1/3 ounce

2 tablespoons        = 1 fluid ounce

4 tablespoons        = 2 ounces or 1/4 cup

8 tablespoons        = 4 ounces or 1/2 cup

16 tablespoons      = 8 ounces or 1 cup

1 cup                     = 8 fluid ounces or ½ pint

2 cups                   = 1 pint or 16 fluid ounces

1 pint                    = 16 fluid ounces or ½ quart

1 quart                  = 32 fluid ounces or 2 pints or ¼ gallon

1 gallon                 = 128 fluid ounces or 4 quarts

FYI – American and British measuring units have always been a little different.  A British cup is 10 ounces, a pint is 20 ounces, a quart is 40 ounces and an Imperial gallon has 160 ounces.  This is why some of your formulae do not work quite right when the author is English – you will need to adjust the measurements accordingly.

Metric Conversion-Linear

1 centimeter = 0.394 inch

1 inch = 2.54 centimeters

1 meter = 39.37 inches

U.S./Metric Fluid Conversion (Note: cc’s and ml’s are the same)

¼ teaspoon           =1.25ml or 1.25 cc

½ teaspoon           =2.5ml or 2.5cc

1 teaspoon            = 5 ml or 5 cc

1 tablespoon                   = 15 ml

1 fluid Ounce         = 29.5 ml

1 cup           = 236 ml (note: some “cups” are rounded off to 250 ml)

1 pint          = 473 ml

1 quart        = 946ml

1 gallon       = 3785 ml or 3.785 Liters

Volume Weights (dry powders)

1 ounce = 28.35 grams

1 Pound (16 oz) = 454 grams

2.2 Pounds = 1 Kilogram

100 grams = 3 ½ ounces

250 grams = 8.82 ounces or a little more than ½ pound

1 Kilogram = 35.3 ounces

Be careful of volume measurements versus liquid measurements.  One cup (16oz) volume measurement of Titanium White powder weighs 23 ounces (1 lb, 7 ounces).   You see the problem with SAE vs metric measurements.  Do not pack powders tightly

Faux Concrete walls

Contemporary Finishes

A contemporary finish is used as a major design element itself, even if it is an imitation of another material.  Take concrete for example.  This is a major look right now in new construction for clean, elegant and minimalist design.  To use this in a re-design of an existing room is, however, cost –prohibitive and that is when the decorative finisher can step in and use their talents to imitate this material.  Old pitted and oxidized metals is another area of current interest that Designers are looking at imitating.

Natural Decorative plaster (Venetian plaster)

Many of the so-called “Olde Worlde Finishes” are contemporary because of the way they are rendered.  That is, glazing a wall to achieve visual texture with color and contrast, which is an old trick dressed up with a new name.  Textures in various forms have been big for years now and stone-like lime plasters are seeing a resurgence in popularity because of their elegance and subtlety.

Proceed Metallic Texture - Custom Bronze

Metallic finishes are being used today in ways that they were never used before.  This is mainly because changes and improvements in technology  have allowed us to use materials that were never in existence before.

Iron Paint

Iron paint is being painted on surprising surfaces and patinated to allow the beautiful burnt-orange color of rust to glow. Ditto copper and bronze for the blue/green verdigris colors that were previously only available after expensive installations of the real metal.

Design by Elise Kodish

Contemporary and Traditional finishes for interior decorating generally have to follow certain rules.  Wall finishes usually play a sub-ordinate role in the design for interior spaces because one does not want to distract the attention away from rugs, furniture, artwork, etc.  Good interior design dictates that the room should gradually reveal itself the longer one stays in it.