Please advise me on painting my "new" office.

Respectfully, Chai, I differ. I'm sooo not interested in one wall, or two, being x color and others being different. Faux-ness..
Just let light act.

I once applauded a friend painting just one wall red orange in her appartment, a major coup re the management + agreement.

I've changed my mind on a lot of design concepts over time, and the arguing about it is useful and fun. (My business partner and I savaged architectural digests on our lunch breaks, working out, as it happened, how each of us thought.)

To me - the walls are the background for the furnishings, and one or two of those furnishings will stand out as, ah, a specimen tree does. You add sponging, you add contrasting walls, you add confusion.

Where is the focus? The walls and their dramatic play, or what is going on in the room? Maybe the stuffed bear over the computer is the focus.

The walls are the hedge.





I admit that in our gallery/studio, which was something like 18 feet wide and a hundred feet long, natural light only coming in from the very tall front window and door glass, and with various up to 10' high fin walls making rooms but shutting off light. that we lightened the colors as we went back into the interior of the storefront.

Still, doing this stuff in one room, I get this faux vibe that annoys me.

At the same time, yeh, play, play is good.

I can see doing one wall, but it better be good, as in the waterfall at Paley plaza, or whatever the formal name is.

I know it's kinda old fashioned osso...but I just really like having accent walls, or 2 :wink: I love bold colors that would be just too much for an entire room, or would make the room look, well, cheap...as in what drewdad said about having to do southwest veeerrry carefully, or it looks like crap.

I like the different colors to highlight the artwork on that particular wall, or the other decorations in that part of the room. Right now I'm looking out of the office, into the living room at a tall cobalt vase with pussy willow in it. There's a small table lamp next to it with a low wattage light that stays on 24/7, and it casts the most enchanting shadows from the pussy willows on the wall. I don't know how to express the feeling of it...like growth and joy. It just wouldn't work on any of the other colors of the other walls, and if I'd painted them all the same, I wouldn't have gotten that effect.

I do understand what you're saying though osso, the wall being the backdrop, the hedge.

We have accent walls in several rooms. I'm looking at doing one wall dark and the others light/neutral. T thinks two walls with color would be better; I'm afraid it'd just make the room seem unfinished....


Also thinking about going in a burnt orange direction and puttin up some of our UT memorabilia....


Too many freaking options; I'm having trouble settling on anything.


I may get some of that orange and test it on top of the tobacco road....

Can anyone me what color is opposite Pantone 159 on the color wheel?

Chai, your one wall seems like its own kind of Paley plaza - that's a place between buildings in NYC that I managed not to see myself on my one visit in decades, involving trees and a mad waterfall - so even ms. savage-the-digest-and-then-change-her-mind would love it. I remember photos you showed, and I did like it.

But generally, I don't like one or two walls in a color for no reason except fright of color... damned distracting. Kind of like the old saddle shoes - pulls the eye toward the scuffed feet.

Drewdad, the paint stores can do a scan on that color and match it... usually, and quite easily. Hardest part is standing in line.

My office is ass backwards. I had a birdseye maple desk table made to fit across the entire wall on one side that is at right angle to the door so Im at least looking sideways (This is a 10 ft 2" by 31" wide board held on 5 turned birdseye pedestals) . My seat rotates and theres a little birdsye Arts n Crafts coffee table behind me in the center (has a Harvey Ellis kind of detail on the sides) I have two maroon leather Morris chairs for comfy . The walls are a putty green and everything else in wood trim is in deep maroon. including picture frames and floor and crown moldings. Its very spare and bright.

I like greenish colors (putty, celadon, etc) and shades of marroon together.

I have a map drawer and table and a drawing table just outside my door and these are both black topped.
Its a guy look and Im always feeling industrious in that room.

I'm in love with that room, farmer. Everything about what you describe.

Celadon, melts.

I made an edit and lost it; let's see if it's worth adding -

after this - Hardest part is standing in line.

I said,

Re it's opposite, why do you care, exactly? Opposites tend to work together, as we all know, but you don't have to be scientifically precise. Pick up chips or quarts or sample bottles and see what looks good with the sun shining in the room, or just the overhead light, or no light.

Well, you could be scientifically precise. There are people who deal with all that, and some of the savvyest are people who chose colors for ad agencies (KICKY!!) - well, there is a whole color trend industry out there, people who make big money re what is NEXT, advising all sorts of businesses.. Alas, I had a link but that was before a computer crash.

Addendum to farmer, not just celadon, I was being loud.

You know what you're doing, the weave of colors and carving and location and light works.

Me, now, I'd have wood trim as varnished wood. (You, as you know, are not me; me, I wish I could add-on your brain.) But maroon would be in there. Your room is a comfort. That's the point.

yeah farmer, those colors sound very very scrumptious.

drewdad, can you buy actual UT orange paint?

make sure it's exactly right, or it'll ruin everything and you'll just look like a nimrod.

Last year on a game day, everyone was walking around in their colors. This 40ish year old couple wandered by, their shirts were NOT the approved colors. Just a little bit off, but it stuck out like a sore thumb....and it wasn't like they washed them with another color that ran. They bought them that way...I'm sure because they were on sale and it was like..."Hey, it's orange, no one will know the difference"

They were severely shunned.

this....?






THAT is super cool.

I could sit there all day, hynotized. Thanks for thinking of me in connection with that.