Interior Color Consultation

Alameda 1920’s Colonial Revival Living Room Detail
Natural light highlights the room’s jewel-toned blue walls, enhancing the relationship of both the curtain colors and the furnishings.

Alameda 1920’s Colonial Revival Dining Room
The mid-tone grey of the built-in buffet and other trim wood is the perfect foil to the warm golden yellow of the walls and a collection of fine Italian ceramic ware. Deep black dining chairs add an air of traditional formality to this well-appointed dining room that rides the line between casual comfort and formal elegance.

Alameda 1920’s Colonial Revival Dining Room
The mid-tone grey of the built-in buffet and other trim wood is the perfect foil to the warm golden yellow of the walls and a collection of fine Italian ceramic ware. Deep black dining chairs add an air of traditional formality to this well-appointed dining room that rides the line between casual comfort and formal elegance.

Alameda 1920’s Colonial Revival Master Bedroom
“I simply love the colors that Barbara and CJ selected for my bedroom. The room feels so elegantly plush and comfortable, and is a welcome retreat after a grueling days work!” –Nancy T.

Alameda 1920’s Colonial Revival Master Bedroom
Rich, deep brown walls combined with even deeper grey-green trim acts as the perfect counterpoint to the lushly patterned curtain and shade fabrics. The combined color effect sets off the glowing wood tones of the furniture.

Alameda 1920’s Colonial Revival Foyer
An off-white leaning towards grey enhances the sophistication of the well-appointed trim of this 1920’s home. These sorts of whites work harmoniously with the nature inspired palettes fostered during the Gothic Revival, and were mainstays of the Aesthetic, Arts & Crafts, and Colonial Revival movements. They remained prevalent trim colors up until the modern age.

Alameda 1920’s Colonial Revival Kid’s Bedroom
Off white trim and rich green walls act as the perfect complement to the playful fabrics in this young boy's bedroom.

Alameda 1920’s Colonial Revival Powder Room
Oyster and pearl colored trim and accents combined with soft powder blue walls gives an elegant atmosphere to this first floor powder room.

Queen Anne Cottage Parlor
Our clients purchased this 1890’s Aesthetic Queen Anne from the St. Paul Historical Society with intentions of fulfilling the Society’s dream of restoring the long neglected house. It was an honor to be selected as the designers and consultants for the two plus year project, which encompassed preservation, restoration, and some remodeling of the home’s entire interior and exterior.

The front parlor is given an airy feel with the addition of a soft mid-toned yellow in contrast to the richly patterned period wallpaper, trimmed with a deep grey-green.

Queen Anne Cottage Parlor
CJ hand-painted the polychrome accents on the trim of this home. The red and gold of the polychrome enhances the depth of the three-dimensional trim elements creating an interesting contrast to the flat patterned color of the historic wallpaper.

Queen Anne Cottage Bedroom
The frieze of this bedroom was given a russet color in complement to the more neutral grey of the walls. The trim is grey-green, staying consistent with the formal rooms of the home. Photos and artwork important to the family completes the room. A view into the back parlor illustrates how the colors harmonize from one room to the next.

Queen Anne Cottage Back Parlor
The back parlor is colored in the “peacock shades” that were so popular during the Aesthetic Movement. The historic wallpaper’s jeweled-tones are anchored by the raised-relief of the lincrusta dado. CJ hand-painted the lincrusta with a faux treatment that has the sparkle of polished tooled-leather. White lace and light colored accents pop in the backdrop of darker tones.

Queen Anne Cottage Back Parlor Detail
This detail illustrates the importance of choosing the right colors to get the perfect effect. The grey-green trim is a perfect “neutral” dividing the complementary colors of the blue walls and the faux tooled-leather of the lincrusta dado.

Queen Anne Cottage Kitchen and Dining Room
The warm yellow of the walls is the star of this kitchen. It is combined with a mild sort of neutral grey trim that works well with the blacks found in the appliances and countertop. White subway tiles, a white farmhouse sink, white glass lighting shades and pretty white lace curtains complete the room.

Queen Anne Cottage Dining Room
CJ designed the built-in cabinet for the eat-in portion of the kitchen. The effective combining of neutral grey trim with warm yellow walls is illustrated by the light, airy feeling the colors bring to the room.

Arts & Crafts Remodel Living Room
This gracious Arts & Crafts Bungalow suffered after decades of use as a boarding home and rental before our clients decided to turn it into their family home. While the exterior was fairly intact, there was little left of the original interior when we started on the project. We worked closely with our clients for more than a year to design and source all of the interior trims, decorative details and period lighting. The deeply stained fir trim, milled to our design, is balanced by the warm mid-tone green of the walls in this comfortable living room.

Arts & Crafts Remodel Dining Room
Lively, yet intimate, family meals are significant to the family of this home, and colors help set the tone of their gatherings. The green wall color from the living room is carried into the dining room’s frieze while the lower walls are painted a warm medium- value yellow, highlighting the warm glow of the furniture and deeply stained fir trim. We designed the box-beam ceiling and built-in buffet.

Arts & Crafts Remodel Stair Landing
It was important for our clients to have a transition from the intimate and elegant colors of their formal spaces to light and casual colors in the bedrooms and common areas of their home. In designing the interior trim, we specified stain grade fir for the entry, living and dining rooms to transition to paint grade trim in the rest of the home. While light walls were desired in the family room and up the stairs into the hall, we steered our clients away from white. In order to keep the feeling of warmth consistent with the rest of the home, we used this very light buff color on the walls in “the core” of the home.

Arts & Crafts Remodel Stair Hall
We kept the hallway light and bright to bring a cheery atmosphere to the passageway leading to the private bedrooms of the home’s second story. Light, buff-colored walls and warm, off-white trim act as a clean backdrop that brings out the drama of the deeply stained fir doors, and stair balusters accented with diamond shaped cut-outs.

Arts & Crafts Remodel Master Bedroom
To keep the master bedroom uncomplicated, we chose a lighter mid-tone yellow-green for the walls combined with the warm off- white trim used in other parts of the home’s second floor. Deeply stained fir floors and richly patterned fabrics bring added depth and a sense of drama to the room, while a massive bank of casement windows ensures that the room gets plenty of light.

Arts & Crafts Foursquare Foyer
A more true white was used to call out the Colonial Revival influences on the trim found in this Irvington Arts & Crafts home. Nearly white trim frames the deep brown walls at the entry, while a light color used on the frieze and ceiling, paired with lightly stained floors, keeps this entry feeling bright.

Arts & Crafts Foursquare Foyer and Hall
Understanding how a family uses their home directs the tact we take in choosing how colors transition from one space to the next. In this image, the deep brown of the foyer shifts to a mid- tone green shade on the hall leading to the home’s kitchen and dining room.

Arts & Crafts Foursquare Stair Landing and Hall
Neutral colors dominate the walls of the stair landing and the small second story hall, keeping the space light, and directing the eye to the lovely colors of the leaded-glass window. CJ designed the leaded-glass to bring a greater sense of privacy and the colors of nature to the built-in bench that sits just below the window. The space is a favorite family reading spot!

Arts & Crafts Foursquare Dining Room
Bringing in light and keeping the gloomy skies of the Pacific NW at bay was paramount to this vibrant family. Masses of light, almost-white trim dominates the dining room where limited wall space is highlighted to great effect with a bright red. Red curtains and red accented upholstery rounds out the picture, showcasing one of the family’s favorite colors.

Arts & Crafts Foursquare Living Room
Modern meets traditional in the Living Room of this home. Traditional trim and wall colors make the perfect backdrop to the fun fabrics and funky shapes found in the homeowner’s contemporary furniture.

Arts & Crafts Country Home Living Room
Because this 1905 home was built as a country retreat, it boasts a massive living room and a very open floor plan designed for entertaining. Comprehensive color design was important to ensure the integrity of the home was maintained while moving from space to space. Pictured here is the north side of the living room with its massive basalt fireplace, and wonderful fir trim and built-ins. We used a mid-tone custom color that offers warmth, but is also remarkably neutral, to set off the home’s beautiful details.

Arts & Crafts Country Home Entry
A mid-tone yellow-green gold helps to set off the home’s fantastic trim details.

Arts & Crafts Country Home Living Room
This view of the living room shows how color can work to enhance the drama of a home’s architectural features – in this case, massive fir columns, balustrade, and wainscot. The two sided portiere was designed by us and acts as a screen to the home’s original library/home-office.

Arts & Crafts Country Home Library
Period Arts & Crafts furniture combined with the homes original built-ins create an interesting dialog with a wall color that harmonizes with the home’s country setting.

Arts & Crafts Country Home Bath 1
The moss colored trim and russet-orange walls combine to make a dynamic statement in the home’s first floor bath. Handcrafted off-white subway tiles in the shower made the bathroom period perfect.

Arts & Crafts Country Home Laundry Room
We designed the cabinetry and wainscot for the homes newly added laundry room, formerly a mudroom. The room sits just off the first floor bathroom, and shares the bath’s russet-orange walls and moss-colored trim.

Arts & Crafts Country Home Hallway
The walls and ceiling are all painted one color for continuity throughout the home’s second floor hallway. This treatment focuses the eye on the wonderful trim details and period lighting, while compressing the space and directing traffic to the homes’ well appointed bedrooms.

Arts & Crafts Country Home Master Bedroom
Two of the bedrooms feature modest Arts & Crafts turrets inspired by Gothic Revival architecture. The bay created by the turret and the fact that the ceiling follows the angled and pointed roofline, keeps the architecture playful and interesting, while making the room feel very large. The amber-toned color of the room helps keep the architecture feeling large, and fills the room with bright jeweled-tones in the morning light. The homeowners love waking up in this room!

Arts & Crafts Country Home Bath 2
This second floor bath is given a masculine feeling with deep brown trim and wainscot and deep blue walls.

Arts & Crafts Country Home Midnight Room
Another bedroom from this 1910s home has original fir trim finished with orange shellac. Dappled light from the large bank of windows dramatically displays the mid-tone blue used for the walls below the frieze level. The owners of the home call this the “midnight room”, and the darker blue used for the frieze level and turreted ceiling deepens the mood of restfulness. Both shades of blue accent the glow of old-growth trim.

Arts & Crafts Country Home Sweet Pea Room
The homeowners call a third bedroom the “sweet pea” room. This pretty room boasts soft grey/off-white trim, bright white furniture, and a lovely shade of green that recalls the color of the room’s namesake, the sweet pea. It is a wonderful room that evokes a feminine mood.

Arts & Crafts Country Home Dining Room
The reddish basalt of the dining room’s fireplace is brought into clear focus surrounded by soft green walls and deep green trim, colors that dramatically evoke the wooded country setting of this magnificent Arts & Crafts home. Note the wine rack built into the original pass through to the kitchen, and the plaster arch formed by the meeting of the fireplace surround and the coved ceiling.

Arts & Crafts Country Home Dining Room
Another view of the dining room showcases fabulous built-ins, a kimono window, and the Scottish heritage of the homeowner – the table set with a Celtic-knot adorned tablecloth and Scott’s thistle dinnerware. The total color effect is sublime.

Arts & Crafts Country Home Kitchen
A broad view of the home’s eat-in kitchen shows the drama of the room’s L-shaped design and the impact of its color scheme. When we entered the project, what is now the eat-in portion of the kitchen was a sunroom added by previous owners. We designed the kitchen, and kept the addition to use as an eat-in area that met the needs of busy homeowners with kids. The right hand portion is where the original kitchen was – however, all of the original features were gone, and we designed the layout, cabinetry, and other fittings.

Arts & Crafts Country Home Kitchen
In the working portion of the kitchen, black appliances, countertops, and linoleum flooring meld seamlessly with moss- green floor-to-ceiling cabinetry and white subway tiles. Salvaged period hardware completes the period accuracy of the room.

Arts & Crafts Country Home Kitchen
Beautiful architectural fittings set the stage for this sun filled kitchen eating-area. We were careful to stay true to the architecture of the rest of the home when we designed the windows, the wainscot, columns, and the leaded-glass to meld seamlessly into the rest of the kitchen. Earthy-yellow walls and moss-green trim complement the pretty colors of the leaded- glass window, which we designed taking inspiration from the home’s many flower gardens.

Hahn House Living Room
A view from the grand foyer into the living room of Portland’s landmark Henry Hahn House designed by Emil Schacht.

Hahn House Living Room
The Henry Hahn house living room has the warm and comfortable feeling our clients wanted. The mid valued yellow- green sits beautifully next to the dark stained trim.

Laurelhurst Bungalow
The deep red color used in the living room of this remarkable Arts & Crafts bungalow has a decidedly masculine character in tune with the bachelor homeowner’s personality. Rustic, yet elegant, this room is a true beauty to behold.

Laurelhurst Bungalow
A very different sort of color consultation was utilized in the creation of this dining room’s hand-painted frieze. Not only did the frieze’s colors have to work with each other, but they had to also work well with the amazing woodwork and furnishings of the room. Ultimately, a soft yellow-green was chosen for the field color, and the other colors worked out from there. Note that the blue on the upper portion of the frieze is carried onto the ceiling to complete the design’s “sky”. The composition creates an integrated and dramatic effect.