Only one stands out in my mind~~'if something isn't in style, it can't go out of style'. I equate that to, buy what *you* love, not what is being shown in magazines. ;o)

One of my favorites is "Don't confuse shopping with decorating." I repeat that over and over when I'm on a shopping trip!

My favorite is something like this "Decorate for the lifestyle you have, not the lifestyle you wish you had".

His words may be somewhat different - but close.

Where is Magnaverde?

You can Email him.

Here is a link that might be useful: Magnaverde

Here's a few:

Rule #1: Don't confuse decorating with shopping.

Rule #5 - Stop, look & listen.

Rule #12: History has all the answers. All we have to do is look them up.

Rule #16 - Decorate for the way you really live, not the way you wish you lived.

Rule #30 - Contentment comes easily to those who set their standards low.

Rule #40 - Sometimes the easiest thing to change is our attitude.

Dee

Magnaverde Rule No. 63:
Not every rule is a good rule.

Magnaverde Rule No. 40:
Decorate for the life you really have, not the life you wish you had.

Magnaverde Rule No. 3: Decorate in haste, repent at leaisure.

Rule No. 1 is Don't confuse decorating with shopping.

Magnaverde Rule No. 26:
Sometimes the easiest thing to change is our attitude

fwiw, I have several pages of his posts copy/pasted to Word, if someone wants me to post I will. He's always a fun read. ;D

Yes, please.

These are the 'rules' I've saved. Love to have the entire collection.

Magnaverde Rule #1: Don't confuse decorating with shopping.

Magnaverde Rule # 3: Decorate in haste, repent at leisure.

Magnaverde Rule #5 - Stop, look & listen.

Magnaverde Rule #12: History has all the answers. All we have to do is look them up.

Magnaverde Rule #16 - Decorate for the way you live, not the way you wish you lived.

Magnaverde Rule # 22: Never define yourself by what you can't do.

Magnaverde Rule # 26: Sometimes the easiest thing to change is our attitude.

Magnaverde Rule #30 - Contentment comes easily to those who set their standards low.

Magnaverde Rule # 40: Decorate for the life you have, not the life you wish you had.

Magnaverde Rule # 63: Not every rule is a good rule.

Magnaverde Rule # ?: If something isn't in style, it can't go out of style.

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MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by stargirl (My Page) on Thu, Nov 17, 05 at 16:59
I always read with interest your advice to other posters
because I know I'll learn something. So what you're basically
saying is that when one begins to contemplate decorating a
room, he or she should decide on the mood -- not the color
scheme. I agree completely but my question is, "How do you
keep everything from looking like a gigantic jumble of
unrelated stuff?" Do you do this by using ALL formal things
(or antiques) when you wish to create a "fancy" room and
informal things when you want a casual room -- or can both
live happily together? What is the secret, Mag? Respectfully,
Jan

Follow-Up Postings:
RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: magnaverde (My Page) on Fri, Nov 18, 05 at 1:10
Hi Stargirl.
Yes, that's exactly what I'm suggesting, though I've never
expressed it in those words before: decorate your rooms
backwards. That is, determine the effect or mood you want, and
worry about issues like color later.
Doing it this way is infinitely more flexible than using an
easily-described color scheme. It's also a lot more satisfying
in the long run. Sure, a bed-in-a-bag makes decorating a
bedroom easy, but only in the same way that Garanimals made
getting dressed easy. That is, it removes all chance--chance
not only of screwing up big time, but also cnance of
discovering a novel color combination, or expressing anything
at all about yourself.
Unfortunately, even when people don't resort to pre-packaged
linens, they often fall into the trap of me-too-ism. No sooner
does somebody post a photo of a pretty room than six people
say "I love your chandelier. Where did you get it?" or "What
is the brand & name of the paint in your hallway?" Somewhere I
read that the human eye can distinguish 23 million different
colors. So why are half the rooms I see painted Raspberry
Truffle or Believable Buff or Restrained Gold?
Actually, I know why: timidity. In the old days, most walls in
America were white, and you could rebel without much danger,
because it didn't take much courage to pick an off-white.
These days, though, what with a zillion TV decorators always
yakking about the 'WOW! Factor' and colors that POP, the
deceptivly innocuous makings of decorating disaster are
available at fine stores everywhere, so the risk factor has
multiplied. And despite the old line about it only being
paint, most people are still deathly afraid of making a
mistake, so they take the easy way out and copy the neighbors'
house instead. Misery loves company, I guess.
And since there's nothing easier to copy than a paint color,
it's no wonder so many people start at the wrong end of the
process. Even so, it makes me crazy when people start out a
post saying "We've just painted our living room Screaming Mimi
yellow, which makes our new taupe berber carpet look pink, but
we don't want to repaint. What color couch and loveseat should
we buy to minimze this problem? Also need suggestions for
curtains, pillows, artwork, etc."
It's hard enough for people to find a new place--even with a
map--if they're traveling on unfamilar roads in the dark. But
to start out on a trip not only without a map, but also
without any real idea where it is they want to go in the first
place is a sure-fire way for folks to end up lost & out of
gas.
That's why I tell people who are looking for decorating ideas
to stay away from any how-to books, or any magazines published
in the last ten years. Trendy color schemes & furniture styles
are always changing, but the principles of good design remain,
and looking at the photos in older publications throws the
critical difference between trendy design & timeless design
into high relief in a way that's not possible when looking at
today's cookie-cutter rooms, which have what Edith Wharton
called the 'fatal will-of-the-wisp of newness about them."
And speaking of Edith, here's a good quote from "The
Decoration of Houses" of 1904:
"Individuality in house furnishing has seldom been more harped
upon than at the present time. That cheap originality which
finds expression in putting things to uses for which they were
not originally intended is often confounded with
individuality; whereas the latter consists not in an attempt
to be different from other people at the cost of comfort, but
in the desire to be comfortable in one's own way even though
it is the way of a monotonously large majority. It seems
easier to to arrange a room like someone else's than to
analyze and express [ones] own needs. [Emphasis mine] Men, in
these mattters, are less exacting than women, because their
demands, besides being simpler, are uncomplicated by the
feminine tendency to want things because other people have
them, rather than to have things because they are wanted."
Oh, and the formal vs. informal thing? Unless I were doing a
very formal room--a period-correct parlor in an 188Os
rowhouse, say, or a hard-edged essay in strict Miesian
Modernism--I wouldn't hesitate to mix things up. My own house
may be full of antiques, but it's not formal, and besides, it
was the Victorians who invented the eclectic look, with simple
wicker rockers next to high-style ebonized tables, and cozy
embroidered pillows piled on 18th Century satinwood settees,
all set atop a crazy-quilt assemblage of mismatched orienatal
rugs, with an occasional tigerskin thrown in for good measure.
Antiques don't require a formal room--unless you want one.
Regards,
Magnaverde.

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: MrStan (My Page) on Fri, Nov 18, 05 at 8:35
What a wonderful post, Magnaverde....

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: demifloyd (My Page) on Fri, Nov 18, 05 at 8:45
Thanks for sharing your insightful advice and observations,
Magnaverde, and to Stargirl for asking.

That is exactly how I am approaching decorating this
house--with a "feel" instead of a preordained color scheme or
theme. Because of this, I no longer walk around with ten
swatches of color trying to match a stripe in a fabric to the
pillow shams like I did when I was younger. This approach has
allowed great flexibility; if you change an aspect of a room,
it doesn't affect your other selections. I always buy and
display what I love and do not fret too much about matching.
I already like the way I feel when I walk through the house,
and that, in my opinion, is the objective.

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: stargirl (My Page) on Fri, Nov 18, 05 at 10:18
Thank you for words of wisdom, Mag. Whenever I read your
philosophy about decorating, I always want to chunk out every
"matchy" thing in my house and start anew. Recently a friend
told me that my reproduction Tiffany table lamp is too formal
to use in the room where I'm using a rattan trunk as a coffee
table. Guess your theory proves her wrong! As always, I'm
grateful for your invaluable advice. What would we do without
you? -- Jan

Regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: stargirl (My Page) on Fri, Nov 18, 05 at 11:33
I forgot one last thing. So, after you've determined the mood,
does color even enter your mind at that point, Mag, or do you
just put things together that appeal to you, regardless of
color? People are always asking, "What is your favorite
color?" Even as a professional, you must have one.

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: magnaverde (My Page) on Fri, Nov 18, 05 at 15:23
Like I said, Stargirl, if a client specifically asks for, say,
a pink room, I'll start on color work early, so we can narrow
down the big pile of different manufacturers' pinks to a
manageable number, but other than that, color comes pretty
late in the game.
Part of that comes, I think, from the way I learned to
decorate. I only got my design degree in 1994, but I stated
decorating 3O years before that, back when I was still in
junior high school, and most of my early knowledge of the
nuances of period styles came from studying the photos in the
3O-year old back issues of decorating magazines stacked up in
my grandmother's attic. Needless to say, most of those photos
were black-&-white. Add to that the left-brain approach to
things that comes from working with engineers for a decade and
you see why right-brain tasks like picking out colors come
pretty far down on my to-do list.
Favorite color? I don't really have one, although I like the
sequence of clean greens that runs from Nile to celadon to
Hamilton Beach blender to jade to Paris green. Not, however,
that I remember ever using any of them.
One time I took one of those online tests that supposedly
discern your personality based on your favorite colors. I
don't remember what colors I picked (although I do recall that
Hamilton Beach blender green was not on the list) but the
analysis "revealed" that--are you ready?--I have a strong
interest in appearances, have well-definite opinions about
things, have a tendency toward bossiness, and often think that
my own way is the best.
Well, duh. Why do you think I chose this profession?
Regards,
MAGNAVERDE.

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: stargirl (My Page) on Fri, Nov 18, 05 at 15:39
Perhaps we took that same online test. LOL I'm not described
as "bossy," however. It's more like "control freak!" Thanks
for clarifying everything. Why do I always think decorating is
so complicated? You make it seem so simple.

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: Skypathway (My Page) on Fri, Nov 18, 05 at 16:07
This is very interesting and thoughtful - Magnaverde - you
always seem to have your own approach which has such clarity.
I'm a library junky and I've read or flipped through tons of
old decorating books and found that most helpful. And
entertaining- because I quickly perused one book last year
where the decorator/author was complaining about everyone
painting their rooms milk chocolate, coffee au lait and
mushroom - she made the point that these were all beiges and
why not use color instead of beige. This was a really old book
- must have been writen in the 50's or 60's - and we're back
to painting our walls beige and calling it everything but
beige. While I enjoy new decorating books, the old ones are
more fun and full of good ideas.

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: stargirl (My Page) on Fri, Nov 18, 05 at 16:29
While we're on this subject, I hope Magnaverde will give us
some examples of "mood" when it comes to decorating. Chris
Madden says there are three moods or styles in decorating --
adventurous, romantic and serene. Just wondered what your
thoughts are on this, Mag, and if your home fits into one of
these categories.

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: zobeet (My Page) on Fri, Nov 18, 05 at 16:46
I just wanted to comment on 'everything that's old is new
again'. I told my mother that colored ceilings are trendy now,
and she said when she was a girl in the 40s and 50s everybody
had colored ceilings -usually pink, in her experience.

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: stargirl (My Page) on Fri, Nov 18, 05 at 17:18
I remember my grandmother having a room painted in pink. Gosh,
I can still see those Pepto Bismol walls! Perhaps pink was the
popular color then -- or maybe there was a sale on pink paint.
(smiles)

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: magnaverde (My Page) on Fri, Nov 18, 05 at 17:23
All rooms fit into one of those three categories, do they?
Actually, I'm not even sure who Chris Madden is, but I'd love
to hear which category he would put this room in.
And no, it's not my work.
....................................
My place, by the way, doesn't have any particular style.
Here's the dining room, which is just the opposite of my dark,
cluttered living room.
And, yes, I remember pink ceilings. At one point my parents'
bedroom had charcoal gray wallpaper with silver & taupe pussy
willows, flat enamel trim in dove gray, cocoa-brown cotton
carpet, a 194Os Moderne bedroom set in pickled-oak, a
smoked-gray mirror dressing table, a taupe quilted velvet
bedspread and a shell-pink ceiling. Pretty high-style glamour
for a small town out in the middle of nowhere.
Regards,
MAGNAVERDE.

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: pammyfay (My Page) on Fri, Nov 18, 05 at 17:27
Yup, Magnaverde is certainly right about not letting the color
"drive the decorating truck."
I was on-track for the main living areas, but I flunked when I
went upstairs. I matched the MBR paint to a set of sheets
whose color I loved. Now I can't use the sheets because I'm
getting a different-sized bed (and the sheets are
discontinued). And the paint color was always just too similar
to the hallway/main living room area's color--I usually have
to tell visitors looking at my decorating style that they are
different colors.
So the room has never had the right mood to it. It has color,
it has furniture, but it lacks that extra "glue"--no one who
would walk in there would get any sense of the mood. It's
still a "before" picture. The contemporary style I have for
the living room never made it upstairs, because I was
decorating solely around what I had instead of thinking about
what the space needed.
(But I think it's going to take a while to stop walking around
with swatches!)

Regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: stargirl (My Page) on Fri, Nov 18, 05 at 17:36
Thank you for sharing the wonderful pictures. When I look at
the bottom one, I think "clean and classic." It's definitely
in a category all to itself -- so I think Ms. Madden was
wrong. Say, is that the cover of "Expensive Homes" magazine I
see through the doorway! LOL Actually, Chris Casson Madden is
a lady and has written several books on home decor. She has
her own line of furnishings at one of the major department
stores, and once had a decorating program on television, I
believe. Although I don't adhere to everything I read,
especially in books written by designers, I do like to read
them. I've got books from Rachel Ashwell to Alexandra Stoddard
and I read them purely for enjoyment. Did you have all those
great pieces of furniture before you moved to this apartment
-- or did you acquire them gradually. I love them.

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: magnaverde (My Page) on Sat, Nov 19, 05 at 0:24
Stargirl, thanks for your kind words. I've only been in my
current place for a few years, but most of the stuff that's
crammed in here goes way back.
I started buying antique furniture in high school, when I paid
$35 for a massive Empire sleigh bed I spotted in the window at
the Salvation Army. I got my dining room's bird's-eye maple
chairs a few years later, at the bankruptcy sale of the Hotel
Wolford in Danville, Illinois. They're actually folding
chairs, and they came from the hotel ballroom, where my
parents met on New Years Eve, 1948. Here's a shot of one of
them in my first apartment after college, circa 1978.
Obviously, my taste hasn't changed in 3O years. In fact, if I
had a picture of my room when I was in fifth grade, you'd see
my tastes have never changed at all. The pieces, of course,
were different back then, but the look was exactly the same.
My folks must have wondered what the hell was wrong with me.
At any rate, my no-style approach to decorating is a lot
easier on the budget than the trend-of-the-moment look that a
lot of designers go for. M.

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: joyjoy45 (My Page) on Sat, Nov 19, 05 at 1:13
Magnaverde,
Wonderful to read your posts--always.

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: Sharla (My Page) on Sat, Nov 19, 05 at 1:33
I appreciated your insight, magnaverde. I am no decorator but
love decorating. I've decorated our home to be "us" and
haven't worried too much about color until the mood was
determined. Many people have commented how comfortable our
home is- which is what I was trying to achieve. I admit to
using some trendy colors, but it's because it's what I love,
not just because it was the "in" thing at the time. I've
always felt myself an inferior decorator because of my
approach, but after reading your post, I feel much better.
Thanks!

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: bnicebkind (My Page) on Sat, Nov 19, 05 at 8:45
Magnaverde,
Perhaps you can help me too. I have painted the walls in my
bedroom Tiffany blue...you know, the color of a tiffany's
box...aka...aqua. what colors and how would you decorate the
bed? What about the side chairs? would you try and match this
aqua in the fabrics?

Looking for opinion..
Posted by: dastowers (My Page) on Sat, Nov 19, 05 at 11:56
Magnaverde- I am sort of following your approach. I know that
I want a warm cozy yellow/mustard that will not shock you when
you walk into my Nantucket Style home- picture sage
exterior/sandstone trim- blends in very close. Far away the
house looks very monocromatic. So when you walk in the
foyer/sunroom you will see the yellow color immediately. and
the color will be used on the whole floor as it is REALLY
open-12 foot wide doorways. The color I am looking for will
wrap you in it's arms when you walk thru the door and say "I
love you, please stay and relax!" Any thoughts? The floors
will be a warm oak- 5" wide planking. The rooms are full of
windows so natural light will strean thru the entire place.
I really like how you are willing to help others and have
enjoyed reading all your posts.
Davena

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: magnaverde (My Page) on Sat, Nov 19, 05 at 16:05
Hi friends.
Davena, I think it all despends on how one defines the word
"help." If it means "suggest a philosophical approach to
decorating" or "provide a historical background & aesthetic
context for different styles", than yes, I do give a lot of
help, sometmes more than peoplr really want. If you mean
"provide paint names & nunmbers" for people, or "name stores
that sell high-end furniture at deep discounts" then, no, I'm
sorry to say I'm no help at all.
I try to keep my answers on message boards as generic as
possible for the simple reason that the more narrowly focused
on a specific problem an answer is, the fewer people it
applies to. It reminds me of the opposite approaches to
storing food my two grandmothers had.
One grandmother had a pantry wall full of cabinets stacked
with of evey Tupperware container ever made, from the icy,
translucent pastels & crisp shapes of the early days to the
197Os TV-shaped pieces in opaque golds & greens & browns, to
the postmodern teals & mauves to the new brights with their
funky multicolored closers. That grandmother's pantry was like
a museum of 2Oth Century product design. My other grandmother
had a drawer with a roll of Reynolds Wrap.
Based solely on eye appeal, the Tupperware won hands down
(except for the 7Os stuff, I mean) and their iconic deviled
egge server is a classic proof that functional doesn't have to
mean ugly. Next to this sleek beauty at a big family picnic, a
bunch of eggs served in wrinkled aluminum foil looked straight
outta Hardscrabble Farm.
But when it was time to go home, that beautiful egg server
became useless. It was no good for packing up leftover
sandwiches, or the remains of the chocolate cake. And you
couldn't use it to wrap up the oozing stems of the milkweed
plants growing in the roadside gullies that we picked for a
fall bouquet, and it wansn't any good for protecting the
fragile seed-heads of the cattails in the marshy ditches when
we piled them in the trunk with the lawnchairs & balls & bats.
Aluminum foil, on the other hand, could do all of those
things, and more besides. It could be alid a lid for lightning
bugs in a jar, it could make a robot costume for Halloween, It
could be a TV antenns, or gift wrap, or a sun block at the
window of our un-air-conditioned car. Aluminum foil could do
all those things, with a lot less expense and a lot less
wasted storage space than a wall of overspecialized
Tupperware.
Anyway, it's like that with online advice, too. The more
specialized such advice, the less useful it is to the most
people. For one thing, it's impossible to suggest an
appropriate color for a room unless I've stood in that room
and seen how the light falls, and what the green of the grass
& leaves does to the room, what color is in the next room,
because a single paint can look like a completely different
color in two different rooms of the same house. Besides, even
if I had magic vision and were able to prescribe exactly the
particluar color that would look great in a particular room,
it wouldn't help anybody else, because their rooms would all
have different sizes & exposures. One size doesn't fit all.
That;s the problems with TV decorating shows. Because of the
intimacy of the medium, it seems like the those people are
talking specifically to you,/i>. But they're not.
That's why I keep my message board advice vague: doing it this
way helps people think about their own rooms and come up with
answer for themselves. In any situation--especially when it
comes to color--one answer will be better than another, but
that doesn't mean that that answer will apply to anybody else.
But that's OK. Decorating isn't nearly as hard as people tend
to make it. What makes it so difficult for so many people is
focusing too much on the 'answer' itself, rather than on the
learning process that leads you to it.
Regards,
MAGNAVERDE.
............................
Davena, I see no reason an all-yellow house can't be
attractive. Just vary your shades as you move through the
sapce. Here's some rooms to do some reasearch on: Nancy
Lancasters' rooms at Ditchley & Haseley Court; John Soane's
Patent Yellow Drawing Room in London; the Yellow Oval Room at
the White House. All very formal but absolutely stunning rooms
in which the color scheme is very restricted.
Bnicebkind: If a room has a lot of handsome--but
mismatched--furniture the way mine does, I try to keep the
wall color close in tone (if you don't know, look it up) to
that of the woods & fabrics. That way the emphasis in not on
outline or shape, but on surfaces: this color vs. that color,
carved vs. inlaid. A close tone like this can also provide a
feeling of calm for a room that might otherwise have too much
going on.
If the furniture has great lines or is all matching, I like to
use the wall color to silhouete the shapes & focus the eye,
which means I keep the palette resticted to one--or maybe
two--colors and use a paint value that contrasts with the
wood. That's one reason you see a lot of pale blues right now:
there are alot of dark finishes in the marketplace--Barbara
Barry, Thomas O'Brien, Thomas Pheasant--and the combination is
a good one. When woods go lighter again in time--and they
will, to oak, maple, whitewashed woods & painted
finsishes--such pales colors will look insiped and it wuill be
time to darkent the walls again, but in the meantime, Tifany
blue still looks great. Here's your homework assignment:
Madame Castaing's apartment in Paris; Elsie deWolfe's villa at
Versailles. What we call Tiffany blue was hot in the 18th
centruy, and I can think of a bunch of sprightly German Bococo
rooms where the color scheme was based on turquoise or jade
green, wuth white-&-gold woodwork, accented with shell pink or
coral. roomsRooms to look turn blinde birchwhy the cuin th.s a
defining backgroun is look it upcololike mine, I prefer to use
If a room has decent--bgo; ThesdAVENA,
magnaverde.
.................................
Davena, here are
givesns., the suggestion I completelky . The same color
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when Aluminum, Aout of the growing in the roadside ditches
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aluminum needen't mean ugly. of form-follows-function design
that also happens to be beautiful. . , But on TheWhich was
more attractive? Wen I mentioned a museum, I wasn't kidding.
The Museum of Modern Art in New York blessed Tupperware with a
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it was time for a picnic
When I said tuNow

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ingenious new containers from Tupperware, the other one used
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.
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RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: magnaverde (My Page) on Sat, Nov 19, 05 at 17:02
Oops. I hit the submit button too soon. Here's the cleaned-up
version, for those of you still with me...
Hi friends.
Davena, I think it all depends on how one defines the word
"help." If it means "suggest a philosophical approach to
decorating" or "provide a historical background & aesthetic
context for different styles", than yes, I do give a lot of
help, sometmes more than people really want. If you mean
"provide paint names & nunmbers" for people, or "name stores
that sell high-end furniture at deep discounts" then, no, I'm
sorry to say I'm not really much help at all.
I try to keep my answers on message boards as generic as
possible for the simple reason that the more narrowly focused
on a specific problem an answer is, the fewer people it
applies to. It reminds me of the opposite approaches to
storing food my two grandmothers had.
One grandmother had a pantry wall full of cabinets stacked
with of evey Tupperware container ever made, from the icy,
translucent pastels & crisp shapes of the early days to the
197Os TV-shaped pieces in opaque golds & greens & browns, to
the postmodern teals & mauves to the new brights with their
funky multicolored closers. That grandmother's pantry was like
a museum of 2Oth Century product design. My other grandmother
had a drawer with a roll of Reynolds Wrap.
Based solely on eye appeal, the Tupperware won hands down
(except for the 7Os stuff, I mean) and their iconic deviled
egge server is a classic proof that functional doesn't have to
mean ugly. Next to this sleek beauty at a big family picnic, a
bunch of eggs served in wrinkled aluminum foil looked straight
outta Hardscrabble Farm.
But when it was time to go home, that beautiful egg server
became useless. It was no good for packing up leftover
sandwiches, or the remains of the chocolate cake. And you
couldn't use it to wrap up the oozing stems of the milkweed
plants growing in the roadside gullies that we picked for a
fall bouquet, and it wasn't any good for protecting the
fragile seed-heads of the cattails in the marshy ditches when
we piled them into the trunk with the lawn chairs & balls &
bats.
Aluminum foil, on the other hand, could do all of those
things, and more besides. It could be alid a lid for lightning
bugs in a jar, it could make a robot costume for Halloween, It
could be a TV antenns, or gift wrap, or a sun block at the
window of our un-air-conditioned car. Aluminum foil could do
all those things with a lot less expense and a lot less wasted
storage space than a wall full of overspecialized Tupperware.
Anyway, it's like that with online advice, too. The more
specialized such advice is , the less useful it is to the most
people. For one thing, it's impossible to suggest an
appropriate color for a room unless I've stood in that room
and seen how the light falls, and what the green of the grass
& leaves does to the room, what color is in the next room,
because a single paint can look like a completely different
color in two different rooms of the same house. Besides, even
if I had magic vision and were able to prescribe exactly the
particular shade that would look great in a particular room,
it wouldn't help anybody else, because their rooms would all
have different sizes & exposures. One size doesn't fit all.
That's the problems with TV decorating shows. Because of the
intimacy of the medium, it seems like the those people are
talking specifically to you. But they're not.
That's why I keep my message board advice vague: doing it this
way helps people think about their own rooms and come up with
answer for themselves. In any situation (and especially when
it comes to color) one answer will be better than another, but
that doesn't mean that that answer--however good it is for
that person--will apply to anybody else. But that's OK.
Decorating isn't nearly as hard as people tend to make it. In
fact, what makes it so difficult for so many people is
focusing too much on the 'answer' itself, rather than on the
learning process that leads you to it.
Regards,
MAGNAVERDE.
............................
Davena, I see no reason an all-yellow house can't be
attractive. Just vary your shades as you move through the
space. Here are some rooms to do some research on: Nancy
Lancaster's rooms at Ditchley & Haseley Court; John Soane's
Patent Yellow Drawing Room in London; the Yellow Oval Room at
the White House. All very formal but absolutely stunning rooms
in which the color scheme is very restricted.
Bnicebkind: If a room has a lot of handsome--but
mismatched--furniture the way mine does, I try to keep the
wall color close in tone (if you don't know, look it up) to
that of the woods & fabrics. That way the emphasis in not on
outline or shape, but on surfaces: this color vs. that color,
carved vs. inlaid. A close tone like this can also provide a
feeling of calm for a room that might otherwise have too much
going on.
If the furniture has great lines or is all matching, I like to
use the wall color to silhouete the shapes & focus the eye,
which means I keep the palette resticted to one--or maybe
two--colors and use a paint value that contrasts with the
wood. That's one reason you see a lot of pale blues right now:
there are a lot of dark finishes in the marketplace right
now--Barbara Barry, Thomas O'Brien, Thomas Pheasant--and the
combination is a good one. When woods go lighter again in
time--and they will, to oak, maple, whitewashed woods &
painted finsishes--such pale colors will look insipid and it
will be time to darken the walls again, but in the meantime,
Tifany blue still looks great. Here's your homework
assignment: Madame Castaing's apartment in Paris; Elsie de
Wolfe's villa at Versailles. What we call Tiffany blue was hot
in the 18th centruy, and I can think of a bunch of sprightly
German Bococo rooms where the color scheme was based on
turquoise or jade green, with white-&-gold woodwork, accented
with shell pink or coral. Go to the library and get yourself a
book on the period and you'll see what I mean. Good luck.
M.

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: boopadaboo (My Page) on Sat, Nov 19, 05 at 17:25
Now that explains a lot. I feel really dopey that I never made
the connection. Magnaverde you could be a decorating shrink!
:) No wonder I am so drawn to being matchy matchy - My mother
always dressed me in garanamils. (I have been meaning to type
that since I first read that comment earlier in this thread
and I didnt' get to it till now so it is a bit back to the
start of the topic - sorry) I just had to comment that I
couldnt believe I never put the two together before!

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: miramira (My Page) on Sat, Nov 19, 05 at 19:39
Well, I just think it's so exciting to be challenged to do
historical decorating research and I'll be interested to see
what the habitues of this forum think of Ditchley and the
Castaing apartment. And if anyone does rooms based on those
themes or schemes I would just love to see the pix! Bet Ellen
Kennen could be really helpful in matching up the paint.

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: bnicebkind (My Page) on Sat, Nov 19, 05 at 21:37
Magnaverde, We do not have the furniture yet, and will only
buy an armoire' and a bed for this master bedroom. I should
have mentioned that the woodwork is all white against the
tiffany blue. we are going for a sea-side feel, but in a
sophisicated way...by that I mean NOT the "cute" sea-side
where some people decorate with lighthouse lamps, etc. More
along the lines of Coastal Living magazine...the antiques
adding what I imagine the interesting houses in the Bahamas
and Burmuda might have had. Fresh Casual linens, cool colors
as a retreat from the hot sun, the antiques and wood floors
anchor the rooms, lending history and debth, and interest.
Casual, with elements of formal touches, but no silks...linens
and cottons.
****The question that I was really asking was that if you had
colored walls...say the Tiffany blue, do I try and match this
color in the duvet, or choose and off- white, then add a
Tiffany blue skirt and shams to the bed, and add a blanket
across the bottom to give it more interest? When building the
bed covers, to I contrast the wall color, or try and match it
on the duvets, and chairs?
In terms of research...I have researched so many details
building this house, and I am worn out. DH is getting very
testy that I do not finalize choices. I ponder, and ponder. It
is time to just put a room together.

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: magnaverde (My Page) on Sun, Nov 20, 05 at 3:41
"Decorating isn't nearly as hard as people tend to make it. In
fact, what makes it difficult for many people is focusing too
much on the 'answer', rather than on the learning process that
will lead them to it. That's why I keep my message board
advice vague: it helps people think about their own rooms and
come up with answers for themselves."
But here's a hint, for those who are too tired to do their
homework...

Thank you!
Posted by: dastowers (My Page) on Sun, Nov 20, 05 at 9:29
I have googled all of your suggestions- the White House was
really a nice color- still too yellow. But I think I have
fould my color- EK mustard seed. I looked at 4000 colors last
night on color charts website but couldn't find the shade.
Then I remembered a post in the gallery about EK. THAT was the
color!
Thanks for all your advice and keep it coming!
Davena

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: suszann (My Page) on Sun, Nov 20, 05 at 10:02
No sooner does somebody post a photo of a pretty room than six
people say "I love your chandelier. Where did you get it?" or
"What is the brand & name of the paint in your hallway?"
----------------------------------------------------------
Magnaverde, so glad you noted this, its one of my pet peeves.
The posters are looking for something proven and "safe"
instead of making their own choices. One size does not fit
all. Suzanne

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: Elisabeth_pinelake (My Page) on Sun, Nov 20, 05 at
12:07
For me, color (overall, such as peach, not minute, such as BM
whatever) is part of mood, but that's because, at my age, I
know what colors spark what moods, I have strong preferences,
I live alone, and I don't give a rat's *ass what other people
think. High contrast makes me edgy (with one exception:
yellowy-cream with black) and I dislike primary colors and
most brights. Things can be fairly intense, just not bright or
very dark. Oh, and I am really, really uncomfortable with
white, especially, and off-whites (possibly because almost
everything I have would be too high-contrast against them). So
by my nature, I have less to choose from.
The other element is that I have traveled a lot and bought a
lot of textiles (especially scarves, saris, African dress
lengths and shawls) and a few carvings. My mother does collage
and painting, as her mother did, and I buy a few things
(really, wall color would hardly matter if I had everything
up!). So my style is intensely personal (I don't think I've
ever seen a PB catalog) and incorporates disparate ethnic
elements, but in a restsricted color range.
I tend toward muted midtones. In my large entertaining areas,
I have peach with dusty rose furniture from different periods.
It had to be warm and welcoming - I like to have large crowds
over. The 8x 10 entry way is sponged Tuscan (butterscotch over
cream) to disguise the fact that the walls are oriented strand
board), with stamped dragonflies and fabric falling leaves on
the walls, and Amish bentwood furniture. There's an African
carved bird and some Moroccan copper lanterns for decoration.
This is part of the entertaining area when it's warm enough (a
lot of the time, in Atlanta).
The two bedrooms and the den off the entertaining area are
where I actually do most of my living. For my bedroom I wanted
warm and cozy exotic. It has an undercoat of peach paint,
which is irrelevant because it's densely sponged over with
opalescent paint mixed with copper, with copper trim. All the
furniture in this room is new: copper bamboobed from Sears,
twin rattan armoires from Big Lots, and bedside tables of what
looks like Indonesian wood and rattan (found one at
Marshall's, the match at the TJ Maxx in the same shopping
center). The bedcover mixes dark pure reds with some purples
and golds, as does the window covering, and the floor is cork.
Just to show color isn't the same as mood entirely, the copper
finish on the walls had to be sponged over and over to attain
an even finish. I tried color washing first but didn't like
the brush strokes in the cross-hatch method that's
recommended. Then I realized I didn't have to do it their way,
and started doing great fountainlike strokes, which morphed
into tighter curls. This looked great close up, but when I got
finished and stood in the middle of the room, I realized I
would never be able to sleep in there - too much energy
bursting off the walls at me! So the next day my unhappy
friend Al was told to wipe it all off (fortunately you can do
that with these glazes) and I sponged it. Now I love the color
and the finish.
The second bedroom has just been done in EK greens, with green
vinyl on the floor (who says you can't use vinyl a bedroom? I
try to show off the cork in my room, and everyone oohs over
this). It's blue and green with a leather look. This room is
so calming, despite all the books and the jigsaw puzzle on the
Chinese black & blue coffee table, that some people don't want
to leave it.
Actually I think I am lucky that my rooms always just evolved
until I got to my late 30's, which was when I first set out to
make radical changes to my first home. It was an apartment
with an L-shaped living/dining area. I hated that dining area
and barely used the 2nd bedroom, so I switched them. That gave
me a huge living/entertaining area, with bookcases and a desk
where the dining table used to be, and a separate dining room,
which I craved (and people loved to eat there).
To this day, I have never started with a blank canvas - I've
never wanted to get rid of everything and start fresh, and
I've never had to to love my home. Actually, most of my
friends love my home too. I tend not to invite the more
narrow-mindedly middle-class of my colleagues (and there's no
reason to - I don't entertain for work, I just invite them if
I really like them and think they will enjoy the
artists/musicians community I live in).

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: bnicebkind (My Page) on Sun, Nov 20, 05 at 12:08
Suszann, "that is one of my pet peeves. The posters are
looking for something safe instead of making their own
choices".
Can you please imagine that so many of us have several hundred
dollars invested in quarts of paint barely used, in trying to
come up with the right color? That the irritation and
frustration that the actual paints may bare little resemblence
to the paper card sample from the store, that is no bigger
than 2"X 2"? That the lighting at the store (why do they have
floresent lighting in paint stores anyway) causes the paint to
look very different than it might in an actual home, where the
other elements, including lighting, makes the paint look a
completely different shade than you were looking for? My DH
and I spent an entire Saturday trying to get the blue right
for just one room. Two other weekends spent trying to get the
exterior color right, (including paying 2 different interior
designers their hourly rate for their advice on which shade
was the right one for our home...they both chose the same
shade... and we still only got it about 95% right. We bought
so many quarts of paints trying to get the color right. The
same for the living room and Dining room. Colors that I
thought would be perfect...like Restoration hardware Silver
sage, look like a muddy gray in our home. Again, 2-3 more
days, and many, many, quarts of paint, and we still only have
it 90% right...but 90% right is what it will be. Enought is
enough already. And so on, and so on, for every room in the
house. When finally, I saw a paint on a friends wall, and
asked her for the color, and sure enough, it was the perfect
shade for my childs room.
So instead of allowing this to be your pet peeve, please
consider what a lovely gift it is to be generous and gracious
with a friend. I am thankful that my friend was kind and
generous in spirit to "happily" share the paint shade for my
childs room...we must have over $400 in useless quarts sitting
in the garage, which we will donate. "Proven and safe" is
beginning to make alot more sense, both from a fianacial point
of view, and the stress and time that experimenting is putting
my family through. And I am a fairly creative, and
design/style conscious individual. Can you imagine how
difficult this must be for those who have no sense of style,
or design or color? What a difficult process this must be?
People have different gifts. One friend may share her gift of
humor with you, to make life brighter. Another may offer her
gift of loyality...where you know you can share your heart and
thoughts and they will be safe. Another may be the friend
whose home is always open to you or your children. Another may
offer great advice. You get the picture. Your gift may be a
keen sense of style, color, or spatial, where you can just
walk into a room and see its possibilities in a way your
friends cannot. So instead of being irritated with a friend
who asks... perhaps you could look at it as a way of sharing
something that comes easily to you, as a gift to your friend.

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: CallMeKaren (My Page) on Sun, Nov 20, 05 at 12:33
That is a very lovely, thought-provoking post, bnicebkind.
Thanks.

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: miramira (My Page) on Sun, Nov 20, 05 at 13:24
Anyone who needs sympathy because they're exhausted from
choosing paint colors and can't seem to find the right
decorator might think about how that comes across to those on
the forum who are rebuilding their homes in the wake of
Katrina and Rita. Now, that's really exhausting. Bet those
folks would think it's great if they just had paint color to
deal with.

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: suszann (My Page) on Sun, Nov 20, 05 at 14:02
Your post implies that I am the perfect decorator who never
errs. Far from the truth, I have posted my chagrin at all the
costly mistakes I made, with paint colors and furniture
choices, and today I would opt for professional help, it being
much less costly in the long run. Surely u/would agree that
seeing a wall color on a posted pic is a far cry from how it
would look in someone elses home. I understand that there are
young people for whom this a new venture, and they find it
daunting, I've been there, and still am. My post was not meant
to denigrate, but rather to be inventive and learn to make
good choices.

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: dastowers (My Page) on Sun, Nov 20, 05 at 14:04
Miramira- that isn't really fair and snippy. Just because
someone states on a DECORATING FORUM none the less- they are
having a difficult time deciding on a color and are just
exhuasted with making decisions doesn't mean they haven't
taken in consideration others hardships. Was she supposed to
say "In light of the Iraq war, I realize this isn't important.
And with Katrina and Rita I don't feel I should ask this silly
question."? No. Decorating and making a home is what this
forum is about.
Davena

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: anna_chosak (My Page) on Sun, Nov 20, 05 at 14:08
I don't think that's what Suszann was saying. I think she
meant the people who, when someone posts a photo of a room
that's beautifully put together, immediately want to know what
the chandelier is because they've been looking for one, and
they ask without giving a thought as to whether it would work
in their rooms. That's totally different from someone saying,
"Hey, that's EXACTLY what I've been looking for in a
chandelier and haven't been able to find it! Would you mind
sharing where you got it?"
Picking a paint color from a small picture someone posts on
the internet is even worse because there's SO much variation
in photography and monitor settings and color saturation and
myriad other variables. Again--totally different from walking
into someone's house and saying, "Wow! I LOVE that color--what
is it and who makes it?" Of course there's no guarantee that
it's going to work as well in your setting as it does in hers.

of course
Posted by: anna_chosak (My Page) on Sun, Nov 20, 05 at 14:10
Suszann came back and clarified while I was typing away. ;-)

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: demifloyd (My Page) on Sun, Nov 20, 05 at 15:00
Well, this thread has given me some other perspectives. I will
say that although I am very happy to share a paint color, or
where I got a pillow, piece of furniture, etc., I am not
exactly thrilled when someone comes over, asks for paint
chips, samples of flooring, etc., and proceeds to copy exactly
what I've done, down to the fabric, rather than use one or two
elements and then create a look all their own. I do understand
how frustrating it is and how some people just don't know what
to do--certainly, time and experience tend to make decorating
easier for most of us, unless one is blessed early on with
"the gift."
It is always a good idea to compliment the person whose taste
you admire, and then take notes on what you think makes their
room work (or not) and apply it to your own
decorating dilemma. Personally, I seldom enjoy touring a new
home where the rooms are overdecorated in an effort to "be
finished," with every curtain, rug, picture and knick knack
permanently in place--I'd rather see the room evolve. I'm just
now beginning to decide where to place accessories, what
window treatments I want, etc. There is no way I could have
made all of those decisions before living in the house for
awhile. To me, what makes a room truly memorable is not that
it is a result of a "makeover," a replica from a catalog or a
formula used by someone else, but that it reflects the
homeowner. That cannot be copied.

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: bnicebkind (My Page) on Sun, Nov 20, 05 at 18:45
Thank you CallMeKaren and Dastowers.
Miramira, I am appalled that I sounded so shallow...however,
perhaps you are new to the forum, as I am not worn down simply
from choosing paint colors, and difficulty finding a designer.
I am worn down because for various reasons, our project has
been going on since 2002. We actually signed the contract for
the property in 2001. That is a long time for a family to live
in limbo. To be making decisions day in and day out for
several years. Add a few kids, a small temporary house with no
where for them to play, and no one for them to play
with...and, well, you get the picture. Add construction
problems and hassles, workers who don't show up for weeks at a
time, cabinets months behind schedule with poor craftmanship,
and huge costs to correct, and many decisions that have been
much, much, bigger than paint. If you have been on the forum
for awhile, you will have read about problems such as the
architect making costly mistakes, and abandoning our project
in its early stages, because he was busy with his own project
development. Yes I am tired, and so ready to move and get on
with life. To not have so many, many decisions facing us every
day. However, I am so thankful to have a home.
Living in the state of Florida, every hurricane you hear
about, is a threat to my family, as well as many, many, many
people, and because of the recent number of catagory 5
hurricanes... and the vast destruction they are doing, it is
not something any of us can ignore, or would. Can you imagine
what it feels like several times a year, for such a massive
storm to be headed your way, and not knowing if it will hit
where you are living at 3:00 a.m., or miss this time? And we,
along with most of you I am sure, have extended help to those
devastated by these hurricanes, and try to understand how
difficult it would be to deal with such destruction, and pick
up the pieces and start over.
But as Dastowers said, this is a decorating forum, and is that
place where we can turn for advice, and we can also offer
advice and experience, and encouragement to others who need
it. It is a place where many people, (including generous
professionals) visit, and guide each other through many of the
questions or problems we will encounter when building or
renovating or decorating a home. Sometimes people need a
second opinion, or sometimes they will be the one offering one
to someone else, who is just beginning their project. It is a
place we can use as an escape, and it is a place where we will
learn and where we will share/teach someone else. It is a
place where you can talk about so many things that others in
your everyday life are not experienced with. Or have no
interest in. You will find friends on the forum that are
passionate about many different things having to do with
putting together a home for yourself, and your family. How
many friends in real life like to talk about all of this, or
have this kind of experience or knowledge?

RE: MAGNAVERDE, regarding your advice to Shelly2
Posted by: magnaverde (My Page) on Sun, Nov 20, 05 at 20:45
This is why I love this forum: articulate people who can
express widely differing opinions in a civilized manner. Not
like the board I used to post on, which finally got shut down
because of rudeness & hypersensitivity.
"Pet peeves"? I agree that it's always nice when a friend
compliments something I've done--actually, we're only talking
theory here, not reality, since not a single one of my pals,
and only one of their wives has ever praised my decor--so I
can't imagine getting all bent out of shape if somebody asked
me what color I had used on my walls. As bnicebkind points
out, sharing is a big part of friendship, whether it be
sharing a paint color, or a recipe--something else no one has
ever asked me for, althought I make a mean piece of toast--or
a radial arm saw. If no one ever shared anything, we'd all
still be living in caves, and how would I pay the bills then?
No, sharing is good.
But Suszann is right, too. What's not good is buying six
gallons of the "perfect" paint color--based on a picture you
saw online. Here's a good example: the photo of that room with
the blue divan & the accordion at the top of this thread. Yes,
it's cheesy--I got the photo on ebay as an example of What Not
to Do--but it looked totally differernt when I saw it on
somebody else's computer. The original had that weird red tint
that comes with old photos that haven't been stored properly,
so I tweaked it to get rid of the red and made the walls a
nice crisp white, then I posted it. Except that when I saw the
room on a different computer, the walls had turned a pale
peach.
What if that really were my room? What if someone asked me for
the color name, based on what they saw on their own screen?
The actual color would have nothing to do with the color they
saw, and once they got it up on the walls, they would end up
hating their room. That's what's wrong with playing copycat
with stuff that's online. It's why I don't provide color
names.
Speaking of white walls, a lot of TV decorators love to make
fun of them, but they serve a purpose, one that bnicebkind
probably appreciates more than the rest of us. They might not
be all that exciting, but no one ever ended up with a basement
full of tester quarts of white paint. You can call white walls
boring & unadventurous, but they're as close to foolproof as
you can get, and one day, when exhasusted amateur decorators
everywhere are sick to death of the frustration & expense of
countless failed attempts at the "perfect green" or the
"perfect peach"--which, by the way, don't exist--we'll go back
to white walls with a sense of utter relief. Personally, I
can't wait. Not that I don't like colored walls. In the right
places, I do. But I see way more failures than I see
successes. Which, of course, is why there are professional
decorators. Their services aren't free, but then money is only
is only one factor in anything's true cost. There's also time,
which, for most of us, is already in short supply. Why waste
it?
And as for the morality issue--the relative importance, that
is, of the wrong paint color vs. a destroyed home--I came up
with a solution that works for me a long time ago, the day I
found a wonderful scroll-end Empire sofa from about 184O, with
lustrous crotch-grain mahogany & a worn velvet the soft yellow
of creme brulee on the very same day that the Illinois River
flooded a small town downstream from where I lived.
If I had simply gone ahead and bought the sofa I had spent
several years looking for, while there were suddenly-homeless
people reduced to living in tents, I would feel bad, and the
sofa would remind me of my own selfishness every time I sat on
it. On the other hand, if I gave over every penny in my bank
account to the flooded-out people, there would still be
hundreds of homeless people and I would have ended up sittong
on the floor for years. Neither choice semed good, so I
compromised.
I decided I could buy the sofa--or anything, for that matter:
clothes, books, casettes (this was the early 8Os),
whatever--but I had to give an equal amount to charity. It
worked out fine then, and it still works now. I can buy any
foolish thing I feel like, without feeling the slightest bit
of guilt--as long as I balance it out with an equal amount for
other people. It's so simple. So, in theory, every rejected
paint color I choose does somebody somewhere some good. At
least, it would if I ever chose a wrong color. But I'm lucky
that way: I have perfect pitch in color. Either that, or I'm
just easily satisfied. Or maybe they're the same thing. If
not, they're close enough.
Which brings me to my last point: the quest for prefection.
Forget it. You won't find it, not in this world, anyway. And
even if you could, who would want it? Not me. The great
decorator Nancy Lancaster (see above) said it best:
"Understatement is extremely important and crossing too many
t's and dotting too many i's make a room look overdone and
tiresome."
Besides, color on the wall of any room is only one part of a
larger whole, and what's important is the big picture.
Sometimes, the best discoveries happen by chance. Somebody
drops a glob of rubber on a hot stove and voila' we have
Vulcanized rubber, the basis for modern tires. Somebody else
wants to make dinner for the emperor after a hard day in
battle, but there's nothing but leftovers. Presto! chicken
Marengo. Let's face it: life's a crapshoot. When you look at
the news, you realize we could all of us go at any time. Why
get too hung up on decorating.. Obsessing over anything is
bad, but everybody needs a bit of diversion. My Tupperware
grandmother used to remind me and my brothers (not that it did
any good): a place for everything, and everything in its
place. That goes for life, too.
My first boss in the decorating world was an incredibly
talented & incredibly sharp-tongued woman of 6O, with hair as
orange as Clairol could

This Word Document is 27 pages long - yes, 27 pages of only his posts (I've been a GW member for too long! lol)

Yes, that's exactly what I'm suggesting, though I've never expressed it in those words before: decorate your rooms backwards. That is, determine the effect or mood you want, and worry about issues like color later.
Doing it this way is infinitely more flexible than using an easily-described color scheme. It's also a lot more satisfying in the long run. Sure, a bed-in-a-bag makes decorating a bedroom easy, but only in the same way that Garanimals made getting dressed easy. That is, it removes all chance--chance not only of screwing up big time, but also cnance of discovering a novel color combination, or expressing anything at all about yourself.
Unfortunately, even when people don't resort to pre-packaged linens, they often fall into the trap of me-too-ism. No sooner does somebody post a photo of a pretty room than six people say "I love your chandelier. Where did you get it?" or "What is the brand & name of the paint in your hallway?" Somewhere I read that the human eye can distinguish 23 million different colors. So why are half the rooms I see painted Raspberry Truffle or Believable Buff or Restrained Gold?
Actually, I know why: timidity. In the old days, most walls in America were white, and you could rebel without much danger, because it didn't take much courage to pick an off-white. These days, though, what with a zillion TV decorators always yakking about the 'WOW! Factor' and colors that POP, the deceptivly innocuous makings of decorating disaster are available at fine stores everywhere, so the risk factor has multiplied. And despite the old line about it only being paint, most people are still deathly afraid of making a mistake, so they take the easy way out and copy the neighbors' house instead. Misery loves company, I guess.
And since there's nothing easier to copy than a paint color, it's no wonder so many people start at the wrong end of the process. Even so, it makes me crazy when people start out a post saying "We've just painted our living room Screaming Mimi yellow, which makes our new taupe berber carpet look pink, but we don't want to repaint. What color couch and loveseat should we buy to minimze this problem? Also need suggestions for curtains, pillows, artwork, etc."
It's hard enough for people to find a new place--even with a map--if they're traveling on unfamilar roads in the dark. But to start out on a trip not only without a map, but also without any real idea where it is they want to go in the first place is a sure-fire way for folks to end up lost & out of gas.
That's why I tell people who are looking for decorating ideas to stay away from any how-to books, or any magazines published in the last ten years. Trendy color schemes & furniture styles are always changing, but the principles of good design remain, and looking at the photos in older publications throws the critical difference between trendy design & timeless design into high relief in a way that's not possible when looking at today's cookie-cutter rooms, which have what Edith Wharton called the 'fatal will-of-the-wisp of newness about them."
And speaking of Edith, here's a good quote from "The Decoration of Houses" of 1904:
"Individuality in house furnishing has seldom been more harped upon than at the present time. That cheap originality which finds expression in putting things to uses for which they were not originally intended is often confounded with individuality; whereas the latter consists not in an attempt to be different from other people at the cost of comfort, but in the desire to be comfortable in one's own way even though it is the way of a monotonously large majority. It seems easier to to arrange a room like someone else's than to analyze and express [ones] own needs. [Emphasis mine] Men, in these mattters, are less exacting than women, because their demands, besides being simpler, are uncomplicated by the feminine tendency to want things because other people have them, rather than to have things because they are wanted."
Oh, and the formal vs. informal thing? Unless I were doing a very formal room--a period-correct parlor in an 188Os rowhouse, say, or a hard-edged essay in strict Miesian Modernism--I wouldn't hesitate to mix things up. My own house may be full of antiques, but it's not formal, and besides, it was the Victorians who invented the eclectic look, with simple wicker rockers next to high-style ebonized tables, and cozy embroidered pillows piled on 18th Century satinwood settees, all set atop a crazy-quilt assemblage of mismatched orienatal rugs, with an occasional tigerskin thrown in for good measure. Antiques don't require a formal room--unless you want one.
Regards,
Magnaverde.

I'd like to back up a little. I never use what people refer to as an "inspiration piece", but that's just me. If other people find such a thing useful, then they should use it. But as much as I like rules, I think that 6O-3O-1O rule is bogus. While some decorators may use that proportion instinctively, without much thought, it's the kind of thing that confuses amateurs more than it helps them. Decorating isn't rocket science, and to reduce it to a bunch of mathematical formulae is a good way to get a boring, predictable result. You say you don't want your house to look like a model home, so why do this?
Here's another thing. If you like the reds & pinks in that picture, fine. But if that's actually something you're going to use in the room itself, I'd think really hard before I scattered a bunch of throw pillows & vases in those colors around your room.
Ten yoars ago or so, I went to a party at the home of a Chicago collector who lived in a beautiful vintage apartment building on Lake Shore Drive. Just about everything in the place was museum quality, and I'm sure that's where a lot of our hostess' things will be some day. Her home was also full of art, and hanging above the mantel in her lovely living room was a painting that's been published in a lot of coffee table books on French Impressionism and turned into countless posters. Except I'm not talking about a poster or reproduction: this was it, the real thing, a jaw-dri=opping symphony in pinks & salmons & golds & lavendars & greens. It was like there was aconcealed light behind it.
She loved the painting--who wouldn't?--so when it came time to decorate, she did what a lot of decorators recommend, and pulled the room's various colors from the painting. The walls were done in a subtle strie finish in pale pink, the curtains were aquamarine silk. The various sofas & chairs & antique settees were upshiolstered in coral & peach & saffron yellow, and there was an antique secretary in celadon & jade green. Cushions were rose & Wedgwood blue silk, or rosy-tinted petit point and the carpet was an antique in pinks & golds & browns. The accessories--gilt clocks & sconces, Sevres porcelain vases, busts in varicolored marbles--were also in colors that complemeneted the painting. Now, that may sound like a lot of different colors in one room--and it was--but the room was gorgeous, and how could it not be, since its entire color shceme came directly from the priceless masterpiece over the mantel? So much for the 6O-3O-1O rule.
But here's the thing. The wonderful painting, her most prized posession, might as well have been invisible. With its glowing colors imitated & scattered willy-nilly around a gigantic room, the painting was reduced to bit-player status when it should have been the absolute star of the room. All the pillows & doodads that picked up and mimicked the painting's beautiful colors were as distracting as the doofuses who hum along at the opera. I always want to turn around in my seat and yell "Stop it!"
And that's also what I feel like doing when I see art trivialized by copy-cat color schemes. You & I may not own a real Monet--I know I don't--but the principle works the same way, even if our focal point only comes from IKEA or our local Goodwill. Let it breathe.
BTW, the next time I was at the art collector's house, everything had been recolored. The walls were mushroom, the curtains cream, and upholstery was done in taupe & brown with only the faintest hints of pink. Meanwhile, the painting over the mantel--now that it didn't have to compete with everything else in the room--had regained its rightful importance.
Magnaverde Rule No. 63:
Not every rule is a good rule.

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I love dropping in here during the day, and since I don't watch TV anymore, checking out the threads on decorating boards satisfies my inner voyeur in the same way that watching Desperate Housewives does for other people, but like Ima says, some days you just gotta pay the bills. So that's what I was doing today: explaining to people--in a nice way, of course--exactly why their ideas were not as good as my ideas. Fortunately, they were intelligent people, and in the end, they saw the light. When I hear the magic words "Why didn't we think of that? You make it all seem so simple!" I know it's time to grab my coat & collect my fee. I've never seen a Decorating Den room I liked, but I love their slogan: "Making the world more beautiful, one room at a time."
Anyway, you're right. Figuring out the right color balance in a room, and the relationship between foreground & background isn't always easy. There's a big difference between stealing the show & singing backup. Sometimes, you want other voices, other times, you don't.
If I owned a world class painting, I wouldn't want it to have to fight for air. At the same time, I wouldn't expect everything else in the room to roll over & play dead. Somewhere in between those two extremes is just the right balance, and it's your job to find it.
But here's the thing: few of us own masterpieces, and the only thing worse than triviaizing a great painting with a copycat decor is turning too bright a spotlight on a piece of undistinguished art that can't take the scrutiny. That's the fastest way to reveal mediocre "art" for what it really is. Don't get me wrong, though. I'm not being an elitist. I have no problem with mediocre art. In fact, my place is full of it. I just know where it belongs in the aesthetic food chain, and I don't give it a prominence it doesn't deserve.
There's a story about the great decorator Elsie de Wolfe. A wealthy & self-important woman was showing Elsie around her brand new mansion. She opened a door and said with a sweeping flourish, "And THIS is my Louis XVI ballroom!" Elsie gave it a once-over & replied "What makes you think so?" There's nothing worse than receiving a present where the wrapping paper is better than the gift.
Same with rooms & their decor. Better to err on the side of discretion than to hype something that doesn't live up to its PR. That's why few of my rooms--whether they're in a sleek 195Os highrise or a big Victorian house, or a 192Os apartment building--ever have anything that qualifies as a "focal point." Nothing I own deserves that kind of special attention.
This doesn't mean I don't have anything worth looking at, just that all of my stuff is pretty much all of a piece. So rather than directing everybody's gaze toward one particular thing, my rooms generally let your eyes skim the room and bounce all over the place. After all, the one thing you may like not be the thing that anybody else likes. Why should everybody who comes through my door be forced to look at one thing? "Oh, look,, everybody, Mag has an entertainment center!" OK, actually, I don't, but you get the idea. Not everything has to be a big deal.
Think about it What is the focal point of the beach? Or a snow covered field? Or a starry sky? Or a city sidewalk? There's no carefully planned focal point in any of those things, and yet they're enjoyable anyway. So why do our rooms need one? If we have a great antique piece, or a gigantic modern painting, that's fine. But if we don't, well, don't sweat it.
What does that mean in your own case? Your lamp--handsome as it probably is--may not be up to playing the lead role in your room. But that's OK, it can still be part of the ensemble. So feel free to use its warm, glowing colors here & there--in somewhat duller tones--and everything will be fine. If you aren't sure how much color you want, or where you want the accents, grab anything at hand and try it out. A bright colored scarf wrapped around a pillow? Your kid's sweatshirt tucked over a chair seat? Great. When you hit the right color combination, and the right amount, you'll know it. If worse comes to worse, take a picture of your room and mess around with the regular paint program that came standard with your computer. Not only is it free, it's a lot easier: this way you don't have to root through the dirty clothes hamper to find something the right color red. Basically, just relax & try things out. Decorating isn't nearly as hard as people try to make it.
Regards,
MAGNAVERDE.
Like I said, Stargirl, if a client specifically asks for, say, a pink room, I'll start on color work early, so we can narrow down the big pile of different manufacturers' pinks to a manageable number, but other than that, color comes pretty late in the game.
Part of that comes, I think, from the way I learned to decorate. I only got my design degree in 1994, but I stated decorating 3O years before that, back when I was still in junior high school, and most of my early knowledge of the nuances of period styles came from studying the photos in the 3O-year old back issues of decorating magazines stacked up in my grandmother's attic. Needless to say, most of those photos were black-&-white. Add to that the left-brain approach to things that comes from working with engineers for a decade and you see why right-brain tasks like picking out colors come pretty far down on my to-do list.
Favorite color? I don't really have one, although I like the sequence of clean greens that runs from Nile to celadon to Hamilton Beach blender to jade to Paris green. Not, however, that I remember ever using any of them.
One time I took one of those online tests that supposedly discern your personality based on your favorite colors. I don't remember what colors I picked (although I do recall that Hamilton Beach blender green was not on the list) but the analysis "revealed" that--are you ready?--I have a strong interest in appearances, have well-definite opinions about things, have a tendency toward bossiness, and often think that my own way is the best.
Well, duh. Why do you think I chose this profession?
Regards,
MAGNAVERDE.

Davena, I think it all despends on how one defines the word "help." If it means "suggest a philosophical approach to decorating" or "provide a historical background & aesthetic context for different styles", than yes, I do give a lot of help, sometmes more than peoplr really want. If you mean "provide paint names & nunmbers" for people, or "name stores that sell high-end furniture at deep discounts" then, no, I'm sorry to say I'm no help at all.
I try to keep my answers on message boards as generic as possible for the simple reason that the more narrowly focused on a specific problem an answer is, the fewer people it applies to. It reminds me of the opposite approaches to storing food my two grandmothers had.
One grandmother had a pantry wall full of cabinets stacked with of evey Tupperware container ever made, from the icy, translucent pastels & crisp shapes of the early days to the 197Os TV-shaped pieces in opaque golds & greens & browns, to the postmodern teals & mauves to the new brights with their funky multicolored closers. That grandmother's pantry was like a museum of 2Oth Century product design. My other grandmother had a drawer with a roll of Reynolds Wrap.
Based solely on eye appeal, the Tupperware won hands down (except for the 7Os stuff, I mean) and their iconic deviled egge server is a classic proof that functional doesn't have to mean ugly. Next to this sleek beauty at a big family picnic, a bunch of eggs served in wrinkled aluminum foil looked straight outta Hardscrabble Farm.
But when it was time to go home, that beautiful egg server became useless. It was no good for packing up leftover sandwiches, or the remains of the chocolate cake. And you couldn't use it to wrap up the oozing stems of the milkweed plants growing in the roadside gullies that we picked for a fall bouquet, and it wansn't any good for protecting the fragile seed-heads of the cattails in the marshy ditches when we piled them in the trunk with the lawnchairs & balls & bats. Aluminum foil, on the other hand, could do all of those things, and more besides. It could be alid a lid for lightning bugs in a jar, it could make a robot costume for Halloween, It could be a TV antenns, or gift wrap, or a sun block at the window of our un-air-conditioned car. Aluminum foil could do all those things, with a lot less expense and a lot less wasted storage space than a wall of overspecialized Tupperware.
Anyway, it's like that with online advice, too. The more specialized such advice, the less useful it is to the most people. For one thing, it's impossible to suggest an appropriate color for a room unless I've stood in that room and seen how the light falls, and what the green of the grass & leaves does to the room, what color is in the next room, because a single paint can look like a completely different color in two different rooms of the same house. Besides, even if I had magic vision and were able to prescribe exactly the particluar color that would look great in a particular room, it wouldn't help anybody else, because their rooms would all have different sizes & exposures. One size doesn't fit all. That;s the problems with TV decorating shows. Because of the intimacy of the medium, it seems like the those people are talking specifically to you,/i>. But they're not.
That's why I keep my message board advice vague: doing it this way helps people think about their own rooms and come up with answer for themselves. In any situation--especially when it comes to color--one answer will be better than another, but that doesn't mean that that answer will apply to anybody else. But that's OK. Decorating isn't nearly as hard as people tend to make it. What makes it so difficult for so many people is focusing too much on the 'answer' itself, rather than on the learning process that leads you to it.
Regards,
MAGNAVERDE.
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This is why I love this forum: articulate people who can express widely differing opinions in a civilized manner. Not like the board I used to post on, which finally got shut down because of rudeness & hypersensitivity.
"Pet peeves"? I agree that it's always nice when a friend compliments something I've done--actually, we're only talking theory here, not reality, since not a single one of my pals, and only one of their wives has ever praised my decor--so I can't imagine getting all bent out of shape if somebody asked me what color I had used on my walls. As bnicebkind points out, sharing is a big part of friendship, whether it be sharing a paint color, or a recipe--something else no one has ever asked me for, althought I make a mean piece of toast--or a radial arm saw. If no one ever shared anything, we'd all still be living in caves, and how would I pay the bills then? No, sharing is good.
But Suszann is right, too. What's not good is buying six gallons of the "perfect" paint color--based on a picture you saw online. Here's a good example: the photo of that room with the blue divan & the accordion at the top of this thread. Yes, it's cheesy--I got the photo on ebay as an example of What Not to Do--but it looked totally differernt when I saw it on somebody else's computer. The original had that weird red tint that comes with old photos that haven't been stored properly, so I tweaked it to get rid of the red and made the walls a nice crisp white, then I posted it. Except that when I saw the room on a different computer, the walls had turned a pale peach.
What if that really were my room? What if someone asked me for the color name, based on what they saw on their own screen? The actual color would have nothing to do with the color they saw, and once they got it up on the walls, they would end up hating their room. That's what's wrong with playing copycat with stuff that's online. It's why I don't provide color names.
Speaking of white walls, a lot of TV decorators love to make fun of them, but they serve a purpose, one that bnicebkind probably appreciates more than the rest of us. They might not be all that exciting, but no one ever ended up with a basement full of tester quarts of white paint. You can call white walls boring & unadventurous, but they're as close to foolproof as you can get, and one day, when exhasusted amateur decorators everywhere are sick to death of the frustration & expense of countless failed attempts at the "perfect green" or the "perfect peach"--which, by the way, don't exist--we'll go back to white walls with a sense of utter relief. Personally, I can't wait. Not that I don't like colored walls. In the right places, I do. But I see way more failures than I see successes. Which, of course, is why there are professional decorators. Their services aren't free, but then money is only is only one factor in anything's true cost. There's also time, which, for most of us, is already in short supply. Why waste it?
And as for the morality issue--the relative importance, that is, of the wrong paint color vs. a destroyed home--I came up with a solution that works for me a long time ago, the day I found a wonderful scroll-end Empire sofa from about 184O, with lustrous crotch-grain mahogany & a worn velvet the soft yellow of creme brulee on the very same day that the Illinois River flooded a small town downstream from where I lived.
If I had simply gone ahead and bought the sofa I had spent several years looking for, while there were suddenly-homeless people reduced to living in tents, I would feel bad, and the sofa would remind me of my own selfishness every time I sat on it. On the other hand, if I gave over every penny in my bank account to the flooded-out people, there would still be hundreds of homeless people and I would have ended up sittong on the floor for years. Neither choice semed good, so I compromised.
I decided I could buy the sofa--or anything, for that matter: clothes, books, casettes (this was the early 8Os), whatever--but I had to give an equal amount to charity. It worked out fine then, and it still works now. I can buy any foolish thing I feel like, without feeling the slightest bit of guilt--as long as I balance it out with an equal amount for other people. It's so simple. So, in theory, every rejected paint color I choose does somebody somewhere some good. At least, it would if I ever chose a wrong color. But I'm lucky that way: I have perfect pitch in color. Either that, or I'm just easily satisfied. Or maybe they're the same thing. If not, they're close enough.
Which brings me to my last point: the quest for prefection. Forget it. You won't find it, not in this world, anyway. And even if you could, who would want it? Not me. The great decorator Nancy Lancaster (see above) said it best: "Understatement is extremely important and crossing too many t's and dotting too many i's make a room look overdone and tiresome."
Besides, color on the wall of any room is only one part of a larger whole, and what's important is the big picture. Sometimes, the best discoveries happen by chance. Somebody drops a glob of rubber on a hot stove and voila' we have Vulcanized rubber, the basis for modern tires. Somebody else wants to make dinner for the emperor after a hard day in battle, but there's nothing but leftovers. Presto! chicken Marengo. Let's face it: life's a crapshoot. When you look at the news, you realize we could all of us go at any time. Why get too hung up on decorating.. Obsessing over anything is bad, but everybody needs a bit of diversion. My Tupperware grandmother used to remind me and my brothers (not that it did any good): a place for everything, and everything in its place. That goes for life, too.
My first boss in the decorating world was an incredibly talented & incredibly sharp-tongued woman of 6O, with hair as orange as Clairol could make it. Phyllis claimed to have invented the color orange, which wasn't true, but she was, I'm sure, the first to slap it on the walls in 195Os Peoria. She also had a ton of tinkling gold charm bracelets on each arm that let you know she was approaching, and a toxic cloud of mingled Chanel No. 5 & tobacco smoke that lingered behind when she moved on.
Phyllis refused to be ruffled by anything. Shipping delays, flawed fabrics, a broken pipe in the warehouse, impatient clients, all were met with Phyllis' deadpan "Oh, well..." Her calm demeanor sometimes veered into zombie territory, but she soothed local attorneys famed for their hair-trigger tempers, reassured third wives who quaked in awe at tales of their predecessors' exquisite taste, and dissuaded hot-shot young brokers ready to plunk down megabucks for glitzy Vegas-style atrocities that would have gone out of style in six months. She was the clucking mother hen to all the nouveau-riche chicks in town who dreaded making some fatal faux-pas that would brand them forever as country-club trailer-trash, and she refused to sell the same chintz twice, so that none of her old money clients--and she had a ton of them--ever had to worry about seeing their sofa at their social inferiors' houses. She was everyone's best friend. One time when I was freaking out over a chair that had come back from the upholsterer with the stripes upside down, she bet me lunch that the clients wouldn't even notice. They didn't. We ended up at the most expenxive restaurant in town and it cost me $6O--this was 15 years ago--at a time I was still trying to pay for school on two part-time jobs. When I started whining, she just said "That's OK. This will teach you not to panic over nonsense. It's not rocket science."
Unfortunately, Phyllis died a few weeks before I finally got my design degree, but I think of her all the time. How could I not, with her personal motto hanging above my desk? She worked it herself, in orange & black petit point one year when she was laid up at home from one of her not infrequent auto accidents (she drove like a maniac). The frame is 188Os Anglo-Japonesque and the Victorian script is so elaborate you can just barely make out the words among all the orange curlicures: ""Oh, well."
Regards,
MAGNAVERDE.

Here's Magnaverde Rule No. 40:
Decorate for the life you really have, not the life you wish you had.
In my dreams, I have a rambling country place with rooms variously grand or cozy, and all of them filled with threadbare oriental & antique furniture & paintings. There would be at least one major room facing in each direction, so that winter breakfasts would be sunny, and summer breakfasts cool, with a pine scented breeze coming through French windows that open onto a broad wooden veranda furnished with ancient wicker furniture & shaded by faded canvas awnings. The book room would have a red leather Chesterfield sofa--or better yet, a Knole sofa in faded damask--and thick corduroy curtains, and all my watercolors of vintage rooms would be matted & framed in period style and hung over the empty gaps in the shelves, of which there would be a lot, to allow for lots more books. It would be great. Damp mornings would smell of old leather & wet dogs & last night's cherry-wood fire.
The reality, however, is that I have a tiny apartment with only one dining room, my oriental rugs are rolled up in a closet because I don't have enough floor space to hold them all, and I don't have a book room at all. I keep my rolled-up blueprints inside the hollow wooden pedestal in the corner, which, in turn, holds a Roman marble urn, which gets pressed into duty as summer storage for winter scarves & gloves. Matted presentation drawings are sealed in garbage bags and stashed behind every large piece of furniture. Inside my medicine cabinet is a list--in case my computer should ever go down--of where everything is kept. And I don't just mean things like my will or my grandmother's diamond ring. I mean stuff like my summer ties (rolled up inside the urn on the Empire table) or my colored pencils (tin Saltines box in the kitchen) or matches & lighters (chartreuse Harlequin teapot). Around here, everything has to do double duty.
In a place this small, there's no room for a big coffee table. Or end tables. But then, I eat my pizza at Giordano's, not sprawled in front of a big-screen TV, and since most of my furniture and my rugs are a century old and already scarred or faded, it doesn't bother me if my friends put their feet up on the upholstery, which means that a coffee table--or a gargantuan ottoman posing as one--isn't really needed anyway. And as far as end tables go, none of my friends smoke, so there's no need for ashtrays, and since the only reading that gets done at my place is done by me, I only need one lamp for reading, and therefore, without ashtrays or reading lamps or--heaven forbid--meaningless accessories to support, an end table would have nothing to do anyway. So at one end of my sofa I have a big Empire center table, and at the other end, there's nothing. OK, there's a doorway. Sitting across from my sofa, however, there is a Wiliam IV table from about 1830 that is currently holding my great-grandmother's sterling silver silver cake basket, which is filled with the shiny bronwn seed pods off the black locust tree in front of my building. Most of them get raked up and hauled off by the landscapers as trash, but I think they're beautiful, and that's all that matters.
At any rate, I never follow an empty convention, even if everybody else is doing so. Especially if everyone elseis doing so. So if there's no room for a coffee table, don't worry about it. Maybe a nest of tables would work for you, anyway. Or a small pedestal table. Or a piano stool. In my book, uniqueness isn't particularly interesting and I never do anything just to be different. Then again, I never hesitate to do something unusual if it happens to be the best solution to the problem.
Regards,
M.

Chicago Interiors is worth every penny. David Lowe not only used some of the best-known shots of Chicago's great lobbies & churches & theater but he also has great connections, and he managed to track down photos in private hands that I've never seen anywhere else--long-vanished drawing rooms, swoony nightspots and gorgeous marble banking rooms that looked like Roman temples (although no temple ever was ever turned into an inferno by a dirigible crashing through the ceiling the way it happened down on LaSalle street in 1919). Unlike Lost Chicago, David Lowe's previous book, however, this one isn't all heartbreak. Some of these spaces still exist and many of them are open to the public.
By the way, if you ever get a chance to hear him talk anywhere, go do it. The guy is not only incredibly knowledgeable, he's very funny. He's like a mixture of William F. Buckley's knowledge of everything & Jack Benny's deadpan delivery & killer timing, and I would say that even if her weren't a pal of mine, although David would never use a middle-class term like "pal." At any rate, get the book.
If you had the opportunity to go to school in the Auditorium Building, you were very fortunate. If you get back to town, try to take a real tour of the theatre. A few years ago, they replaced the 30-year old gold paint on Louis Sullivan's ornate plasterwork with 23K gold leaf, and restored the original 23K gold stenciling, which had been lost under 2O layers of paint, and the result is absolutely spectacular, the most glitteringly beautiful room I've ever been in. When they dim the lights right before the curtain, the place feels like it's lit with a million candles.
Regards,
MAGNAVERDE.

I'm with Auntjen + Kristen. My place is full of family stuff. I eat off my grandmother's 195Os Fiestaware. The temperature dropped last night and I got out the Hudson's Bay blanket that my other grandmother bought for their Northwoods fishing cabin back in 1932. When I tie my tie in the morning, I use the mirror that her grandfather brought back from the Centennial Exposition in 1876. But it's not all family stuff. That is, it's not all my family's stuff.
I have LuLu & Ted's knick-knack shelf--I don't know who they were, but their names & their wedding date are wood-burned into the back--and the flat rocks that hold down my watercolors when I'm painting are inscribed with penciled notes about their origin: Niagara Falls, Egypt, Des Moines. I bought them at the same sale where I got the chalk drawing of a boy that now hangs on my living room wall, and if I'd come across that red-haired girl's picture, I probably would have brought her home, too. Money is only one measure of value.
One of my favorite things is the china face of a doll I found during an archaeology class back while I was in college. To learn about methodology & documentation, we spent 3 weeks walking the rows of newly-plowed corn fields in Central Illinois, looking for evidences of an overnight encampment of the Native American tribes who had lived in the area when LaSalle & Joliet came down the Illinois River in birchbark canoes, three hundred years before.
One morning I was walking a rise in a field a hundred yards from the river, looking for the telltale sparkle of rain-washed chert flakes or broken bird points, and instead, I came across bits of broken brick, square nails, a handle from a Blue Willow teacup and the face of a Jenny Lind doll. If I had found an intact spear point on that rise, the way my field partner did, it would have had to go to the state museum down in Springfield, but the museum wasn't really wasn't interested in an 185Os farmhouse, so I got to keep my treasures. And that's absolutely what I consider them. A single patch of land can tell a lot of different stories.
Anyway, it's those stories of the lives behind otherwise unremarkable debris that always get to me. And it doesn't matter whether the stuff comes from the site of a 3OO-year old campfire, or a demolished farmhouse, or an estate sale down the block, it calls out to me just the same. After all, the State of Illinois will preserve the spear points, but if I don't save LuLu & Ted's shelf, who else is going to do it? And what happened to Grannie? And to the red-hared girl? What about them, and why are their things at the mall? I can only do so much, but I do what I can. I'm reminded of the final page of The Bridge of San Luis Rey which won Thornton Wilder the Pulitzer Prize:
"Madre Maria stood with her back against a post; the sick lay in rows, gazing at the ceiling and trying to hold their breath. She talked that night of all those out in the dark (she was thinking of Esteban alone, she was thinking of Pepita alone) who had no one to turn to, for whom the world perhaps was more difficult, without meaning. And those who lay in their beds there felt that they were within a wall that the Abbess had built for them; within, all was light and warmth, and without was the darkness they would not exchange even for a relief from pain and from dying.
But even while she was talking, other thoughts were passing in the back of her mind. "Even now", she thought, "almost no one remembers Esteban and Pepita but myself. Camila alone remembers her Uncle Pio and her son, this woman, her mother. But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love wil have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."

OK, last story. One day I was down on south Michgan Avenue, standing on the corner in front of Roosevelt University--housed in Adler & Sullivan's great Auditorium Building--waiting for the light to change. I was looking up at the facade when an Asian man walked out the front door of the school and approached me. "Excuse me, please. I am looking for the Japanese restaurant?"
I suggested he walk south a few blocks south to Oysy, my favorite sushi place, beautiful & sleek & fairly cheap for its Michigan Avenuea location, but he explained he was looking for a Japanese restaurant in the Auditorium building. All I could suggest was a trip to the school cafeteria to see what the international menu was that day. He was polite and gracious but I could see he was disapointed.
On a hunch, I asked him "You're not talking about the Japanese Tearoom, are you?" He was. I had to explain to him that the Japanese Tearoom had been located in the Auditorium Annex--now the Congress Hotel, across the street--rather than in the actual Auditorium Building, but that either way, it no longer existed. I wasn't even sure when it had disappeared. I figured it had probably been during WWII, when the Japanese Pavilion, a souvenir of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, was also destroyed, burned by arsonists.
But I had an odd feeling, so I asked him a few more questions. It turned out the man was great-grandson of the Japanese artist who had been brought to this country in 1912 by Holabird & Roche--the hotel's architects--to supervise the decoration of the room. My guy had come to Chicago to see the room and photograph it. It was important, he explained, because most of his relative's work had been destroyed in the Tokyo earthquake & fire of 1923. The architect's drawings & photgraphs had been rescued, but only for a few years. When ill health prevented him from working anymore, he had packed up his studio & retired to what he was hoping would be a peaceful old age in Hiroshima. Of course, everything was lost in the war. Of the man's life's work, all that survived was a single cracked photo of him as an elderly man, and a story about a room in Chicago. This poor guy had made a pilgramage halfway around the world to see something that had vanished half a century before.
That was the sad news. The good news was that of all the moments the man could have come out that door, he came when he did, and out of the dozen people waiting on that corner to cross the street, he chose to ask me--the one person who knew exactly what he was talking about.
And not only did I know what he was talking about, but in my office, half a block away, I had postcards of the room. Color postcards, from 1912. But I had better than that. I invited him back to my office, where I also had a copy of David Garrard Lowe's wonderful & heartbreaking book Chicago Interiors, in which the frontispiece--get this--is a full-page photograph of the Japanese Tearoom, with a dignified Asian man in a morning jacket, sitting stiffly in a chair.
I pulled the book from my shelf and showed him the picture. He clutched his chest and said something in Japanese. "It is Great Grandfather." I could tell he was going to cry, so I left the room to go do something. When he left a little while later--with the book & the cards, of course--he shook hands, then bowed and said in a quiet voice "It is a deep honor."
A few years later I received a small book bound in blue silk, with, I'm asuming--it's in Japanese--the story of the man's family. There are photos of prosperous-looking young people & dignified elders, all, apparently, descendents of the artist. The postcards & photos I gave my man are beautifully reproduced and there's even a photo of him & me standing in front of the Auditorium where we first met. On that page he's written "The gods led me to you."
Regards,
MAGNAVERDE.
Auntjen answered your question right out of the gate. It all boils down to the issue of TV or no TV. I can't tell you how many people have asked me "I'm sick to death of seeing people gluing paper bags to their walls! Aren't you?" when the truth is that, because I don't watch TV, I've never seen anybody do that. It reminds me of the old joke where the man says to his doctor--as he hits himself over the head--"Doc, it hurts when I do this." The Doctor just says "Well, then then stop doing that. And turn off the TV."
Anyway, I've never chosen anything because it was in style, and never avoided anything because it was out of style. On the other hand, I don't do things just to be different, or to break the rules. Uniqueness is not a quality I value very highly. Like a famous architect said, "You can't invent a new architecture every Monday morning." And even if you could, by Sunday night, some no-talent hack would have already ripped you off. So what's the point?
Back when I was in school, one of our professors asked us what musician we would compare ourselves to. In between the Jerry Garcias (he wasn't dead yet) and the Elton Johns and the Madonnas, there was an occasional Loretta Lynn or Lucianno Pavarotti, but most of my classmates seemed to think of themselves as potential revolutionaries who would turn the design world upside down with their innovative work, and so they picked Elvis or John Cage. Or Beethoven. When it got to me, I said J.S. Bach. Bach wasn't an innovator, so he didn't create any new musical forms or tonal systems, and he worked within the already well-established style that had been popular years before he was born, but working within that pre-existing style, he wrote more--and better--music than anybody else, and managed to say more things. Every possible mood, every emotion, can be found in Bach's music, and he towers above the other great musicians. Yet unlike the sometimes difficult music of later masters, Bach's music is totally accessible. Beautiful and complex as his music is, everyone can understand Bach.
At any rate, when it comes to decorating, I just do what I want, and if people like whatever that is, then they call me up. If they don't, they don't. It's really that simple.
Regards,
MAGNAVERDE.

Elizabeth, I had to go back to that other thread to reread my own post to see what I said, and more importantly, why I said it. I say a lot of stuff. And Henry David Thoreau said "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Fortunately, that doesn't apply to me.
At any rate my words weren't a blanket statement meant to cover all circumstances. They were merely a suggestion for warming up a cold-feeling room where there was lot of white in the softgoods. In a situation like that. light's the easiest thing to adjust, and sometimes it's all you need.
Back when I was working in the engineering department at the phone company, management got drafted to work the switchboards every time the regulat operators' contract expired and they all went out on strike. We had to sit in a gigantic room for 14- and 18-hour days at these big consoles--think early Star Trek, not Petticoat Junction and in between putting some girl's pay phone calls through for free because she didn't have the right change and connecting other people to the wrong party because I forgot the area code for Omaha, I sat and studied the decor of the operators' room. It had busy floral wallpaper of impressionist-style daisies & daffodils against a ground of green slashes that I guess were supposed to be grass. The ceiling was a mix of daylight-color flourescent tubes & incandescant can lights, and I couldn't figure out why they had both. I also couldn't understand why there was a dial-style thermometer at the front of the room, since the air temperature had to stay at a fixed temperature to keep the equipment running correctly.
But the mystery was solved a few days later, when the phone company used the down-time to repaint the walls & lay new carpet. I happened to be sitting near the thermostat when the painter took his screwdriver and removed the thermostat's housing. When he did, the whole thing came off in his hands. It had no wiring. It was a dummy.
I asked the chief operator about it and she explained that when the operators complained about being cold, the on-duty supervisor would go to the front of the room and "adjust" the temperature, and then, when she got back to her desk, she would crank up the dimmers on the incandescant can lights. In a few minutes, the lights would cycle up to their maximum wattage, and then, after the operators started removing their sweaters, the supervisor would hit another button and the incandescants would slowly dim again, leaving the cooler fluorescents at full power. The temperature never varied. On one hand, the little charade seemed really stupid. On the other hand, it seemed like genius. Either way, it was a lesson I never forget.
But here's the thing: anybody can go out and buy a lamp, but it takes practice to learn how to use them. Most people pick a base & a shade and call it a day. There's a lot more to it than that, and surprisingly, the best way to learn is not to study light fixture catalogs & lumens & foot-candles, but to study paintings of interiors. At least, that's the way I learned. Here are some artists to check out: Zurbaran, Velasquez, Vermeer, Fantin LaTour, John Singer Sargent, Walter Gay, Frank Benson, James Tissot, Edward Hopper, Pierre Brissaud & David Payne. In almost every case, the spell their paintings cast is due not to their subject matter or their models, but their perfect control of light.
Here's a shot of my very first apartment after college, circa 1978. I owned almost nothing--I dragged the chair & the little 193Os table out of the alley--and there was not a single piece of art in the place, but it didn't matter, because when the sunlight raked across my walls every afternoon, my apartment turned into a real-life Vermeer. Who could ask for more?
Regards,

You're absolutely right. Her first duty as a "free" in-store "designer" is to move product. If, in the process, she also managed to help you out with some of your other problems--construction details & the like--that's great, but the store doesn't pay her a cent for any of that stuff. As she sees it, she's spent 5 months with you & your husband, helping out on things that don't add to her paycheck, during which time you haven't bought a thing, and now that it's crunch time, you're putting on the brakes. No wonder she's annoyed.
That doesn't mean you're wrong to be equally annoyed. You've also spent 5 months on this and have nothing to show for your efforts. Your only real mistake was a common one--thinking that "free" actually meant free. It never does. One way or the other, you have to pay, and since you haven't actually bought anything, you're paying in frustration instead.
Here's what I'd do if I were in your shoes, which, of course, I've never been. I'd send your "designer"--not the store--a nice gift certificate for $1OO or $2OO at a nice salon or spa or boutique as a thank you for the helpful advice she gave you on your building questions, and I'd hire myself a real designer, one who will work for you, rather than work you over, while actually working undercover for the other side.
If you like the store & its lines, you can now go in there without having to hide every time you see her across the way, and if not, you can go someplace else without feeling like you left her high & dry. What you should not do is let the time factor push you into ordering bland upholstery where its only recommendation is that it's not hideous, just because you're in a hurry.
But not to worry. This doesn't mean you have to live on lawn furniture until you come up with a plan. That's why they have furniture rental companies. Sure, the stuff they have is cheesy, but it will be gone in a few months, and in the meantime, that stuff will give you the time you need to work with your new designer to get the look you want. Because even though furniture isn't as well made as it used to be, your new stuff will still be around a long time, and you don't want to do something you'll regret for the next ten years.
Regards,
MAGNAVERDE.
Magnaverde Rule No. 3: Decorate in haste, repent at leaisure.

Suszann, first of all, allow me to recuse myself from consideration as a candidate, not because I couldn't work with bnicebkind--I'm pretty sure I could--but because I don't want to get booted off the board: they let me talk all I want but only as long as it doesns't look like I'm advertising.
In the general sense, though, yours is a great idea. There are a lot of people who are perfectly capable of shopping for a sofa or a table or a rug, but they don't have the training or experience to be able pull everything together to make an attractive home.
Not, as they say, that there's anything wrong with that. In fact, I have pretty much the same problem in the kitchen. I'm actually not a bad cook, but I never learned how to get all the dishes to the table at the same time, so compared to the hopeless task of trying to pull together a meal for 8 people, decorating a house is a snap. But, then, I'm the kind of person who likes to face problems head on, rather than cringing & hiding from them, so the first thing I do is candidly acknowledge my inability to handle that kind of stressful situation. After all, the first step toward overcoming a problem is admitting you have that problem. The second step is calling the caterers, and then, well, I'm not really sure what the other ten steps are. Thank goodness for speed-dial!
Anyway, that's my motto: just let a pro do it. That's why we have money, so we can pay other people to do the stuff that we can't. Then all we have to do is stand back & smile & take all the credit. "Why, yes, I did arrange the parsley on that platter. Thanks for asking!"
So my advice to bnicebkind is the same as it was in in my original post: pay off the first woman, then let your fingers do the walking and get yourself a real designer. These days, a lot of them will work on an hourly basis.
Regards,
MAGNAVERDE.
A lot of things excite me, but non-white ceilings are not among them. In fact, these days, what with fancy-pants TV decorators egging on the inexperiendced, I'm a lot mre likely to see garishly colored ceilings that repel me, rather than beautifully colored ceilings that attract me.
Not, as they say, that there's anything wrong with colored ceilings. It's just that after a half century of nothing but white ceilings, people have lost the skill of using color up there, and the heavy-handed results of amateur attempts at the Wow Factor remind me of a ten year old girl's first experiment with eyeshadow & blush. Yikes! "Pretty Baby", anyone?
Actually, it's even worse than that, because it's a lot harder to tone down a ceiling color than it is to wash off the hooker makeup & start over, and too many people, having invested so much energy & expense in painting the ceiling in the first place--only to find it's the wrong color--are too exhausted to redo it, and so, garish or not, it stays.
That's the real risk wth painted ceilings: they're hard to predict and they're hard to hide. A too-bright wall color can be minimized with a lot of furniture & a lot of stuff hanging on the walls, but the ceiling is already the largest unbroken surface in the room, and when it's wrong, it's Wrong and there's nothing you can do to hide the fact. Unfortunately, even if you choose a color that's tasteful--and leaving out the whole 8-foot issue, for the moment--there's another problem with doing it the way you describe.
Part of the charm, the appeal, of a ceiling that's painted in a color that complemements the decor of a room is the surprise factor. The most delightful ceilings I can think of are the masterpieces created by Robert Adam in 18th Century England, tasty confections of delicately-scaled plaster ornament overlaid onto a geometrically-designed ceiling, the whole thing finished off in yummy combinations of candy pastels: sea green, lavendar & maize in a yellow room; Wedgwood blue, salmon & olive in a sky blue room; pink & ivory in a buff room.
But here's the thing. Only one or two rooms in a house got a treatment like that. The rest were more subtle--all white, or maybe white with grisaille panels highlighted with gold. Beautiful as they were, Adam didn't intrude colored ceilings into every room, because that would have killed the critical surprise factor. Adam was a master of rhythm & flow & contrast, and I've often wondered how much of that skill came from listening to the music of the period, with its intricate structure & passages of varying tempo: Allegro, andante, allegro, largo, presto.
These days, contrast is the most underused concept in popular decorating. That's what's wrong with all that nonsense about Rooms that Pop. Not every room needs to call attention to itself. Not every eoom has to scream at the top of its lungs like a spoiled child. "Look at Me!, look at Me!" I'll tell ya, that gets old really fast.
Too many people forget the surprise factor of quiet. When my friends' little boy used to start making a ruckus, his mom would start whispering, and the kid would calm right down, transfixed. The same concept works in decorating, too.
Robert Adam is again the guy to look to. The most spectacular space I know is the Anteroom he designed for Syon House over two centuries ago, all turquoise & gold--and I don't mean SW Restrained Gold, either, I mean the real stuff, 24K, laid with a generous hand over anything that didn't move: sculpted plaster plaques & life-size copies of classic Roman statues perched atop bright blue marble columns that were carved in ancient Rome, buried for hundreds of years at the bottom of a muddy river, then hauled out and shipped to London for this very room. You wanna talk about a Room That Pops? This is it. Think Donald Trump, except with good taste.
It's a knockout, no question. But one of the keys to the room's brilliant success is that the next room in the sequence of spaces that guests would see, is a long, narrow gallery done entirely in chaste black & white. That cool, colorless room--full of more antique statuary--serves the same function as the sorbet course in a rich meal: it refeshes & cools the pallette after a heavy course. Too much of anything diminishes its pleasure.
Which brings us back to you and your 8-foot ceilings. Eight feet isn't much to work with, but if you're going for the contrast of one cozy, intimate room at a certain point along the path of your inter-connected rooms, a colored ceiling might be just the thing. You might even use color in two rooms. But doing it all the way throughout your spaces will only diminsh the impact you're trying to achieve, and the overall feeling may turn oppressive & predictable.
But if you're careful to keep your ceiling color's intensity under control, and don't get carried way with a good thing, you'll probably do just fine with color on your ceilings.
Regards,
MAGNAVERDE
I don't usually butt into fix-my-room threads, but I had to check in here with a dissenting opinion.
Your ceiling is fine. These days, colored ceilings are kind of a decorating placebo, prescribed by TV decorators as a kind of miracle cure for just about everything, but your room needs the crispness of contrast, not more of the same thing. So leave your ceiling alone. Besides, the white ceiling will reinforce the white trim & fireplace. If you can get wood blinds in the general range of your wall color, do that, wide ones with black tapes. But forget woven woods, or black metal blinds. Sure, black blinds would be striking, but you want monochrome, and they will call way too much attention to the windows. Black tapes will add crispness without overwhelming your room. You want the visual equivalent of a sprig of parsley, not an oak tree.
Also, forget a bunch of black-&-white photos, unless you took them yourself. There are enough Pottery Barn clones around already. If I see one more picture of the kid with a loaf of French bread, I'll scream. Don't make me do it.
Also, forget black iron lamps. The ones you have are fine--well, maybe not fine, but they;re not terrible--but those shades need to go: they look like Grandma's house. Get yourself some shiny white paper ones. Opaque. Also forget throw pillows to pick up the colors of the rug. Not needed. And forget the plants. A handsome room doesn't need to be 'softened". The dog can stay.
Regards,
MAGNAVERDE.

To tell the truth, I hate shopping, and I'll do just about anything I can to avoid it. In fact, that's why Magnaverde Rule No. 1 is Don't confuse decorating with shopping. And since it's been years since I was last in an Ethan Allen store, I'm sorry to say I can't offer any opinion on the settee. However, I can say this: a few cabriole legs aren't going to lock you into a certain syle forever, and neither will a fabric that has a lot of green and--oh, no!--no red.
If I'm doing someones else's place, and they have a particular color they want to use, I use it. But at home, off the clock, I don't bother with a color scheme at all. Because I like antiques, there's not a single piece of upholstery in my house that didn't once belong to someody else, and each one of them is still wearing whatever fabric it was wearing the day I brought it home. Except for a pair of barley-twist farthingale chairs upholstered in egg-yolk yellow 196Os linen velvet, no two pieces have the same fabric: my camelback sofa is raspberry red, my Empire walnut daybed's cushions are red-&-gold imberline damask, a barrel chair is moss green mohair velvet, the Marlborough-leg mahogany chair is oyster leather, a 194Os club chair is a gray-&-copper satin stripe with dark green fringe, and there are stools in charcoal-&-plum striped corduroy and faded green needlepoint, and there are a bunch of cushions in a hodge-poge of different antique fabrics. The rug has about 2O colors in a gigantic Empire pattern and the curtains are a 193Os floral cretonne in red, pink, bottle green & periwinkle blue on a parchment color ground. With red & purple fringe.
The room these are in is now Canned Spinach green, but it used to be oyster gray, and in my old place, most of the same furniture was used in rooms that were at one time or another sea green or bottle green or corn meal yellow. In the yellow room, I used a floral sofa with a sky blue ground, and champagne silk curtains, but everything else was the same. It sounds like chaos, but everything got along and it looked great, so great, in fact, that for five years a photo of the room was used as the main image on the welcome page for AOL's Home & Garden boards.
In other words, relax.

Not necessarily magnaverde's rules, but a long post on his interpretations of various decorating 'attitudes'. ;o)

Here is a link that might be useful: maganaverde's post to a past thread..

Reading through all of that is like bicuits and gravy for the soul!

Thanks everyone, for putting this together. It was great to read through.

Has Magnaverde ever written a book? I could read the whole thing in one sitting. His way with words is amazing.

Thank you to all who gathered and posted this.

Thanks all, I read through every delightful post. So refreshing!

Thanks, Alison! Clipped and saved. And of course, thanks to the one and only original Magnaverde.

No book. I've suggested more than once he should at least have his own blog.

Some blogs are so dumb - the overall gist of blogging kind of gets on my nerves but content like M. cranks out is what I think the essence of blogging should be about.

The popularity of M's posts just goes to show that the well publicized "guidelines" for blogging like 300 words or less, lead with a picture, insert picture every other paragraph etc. are guidelines for people who are boring and write about stoopid stuff no one gives two craps about.

More bloggers should write for grown-ups instead of a three-year-old's attention span.

See - now you guys got me started on a blog rant. And where the hell is M any way? I hope he's not dead or sick or something bad.

He does have a website. I think this is it linked below.

Here is a link that might be useful: Magnaverde's website?

I LOVE Magnaverde! I used to pore over his posts as a salve to my injured soul while I was going though the worst of my first marriage and my divorce. Alison704, I can't seem to log on over THERE, byw-- can you help? I have been so out of touch....

You're welcome. :)

Register again, skatiero. It has to be approved by Admin, so you won't be able to get right on.

Allison, if I send you my e-mail, would you be able to forward the MV document?

I always love what he has to say. In decorating, I often think: What would MV do?

Ah, if only I really knew the answer!

I am an avid reader and am rather picky but something about the way Magnaverde writes makes me want to keep on reading even after his posts have stopped. Not to mention I love his fabulous outlook and stories!

I found that post he wrote about his Grandmother and the candy dish shortly after my Grandmother had died. I couldn't stop crying, and I couldn't stop reading it. I still get choked up just thinking about that story. And the one about the Japanese man looking for the tea room. Pure gold!

Wherever he is, I hope he's well, and I wish he'd stop by more often. I can always use the decorating wisdom, but I enjoy reading anything he writes.

Has anyone got the rest of the rules?

I keep clicking thinking he will show up. In that regard I think of him kind of like beetlejuice. Say it three times and he shows up. :)

@DLM2000-GW Saw your post about reupholstering your chairs. Thought it might be here somewhere.