A retired university professor reclaimed life through redecorating and color after his wife of 55 years had passed away. His color tolerance was high; no doubt from living in the Bahamas for 10 years in his youth. The projects started with a request that I choose a color for a single wall in his house. A year later, we ended up painting every surface of the entire house, including cabinets and a new kitchen floor. The view from the kitchen into the dinning room is adorned with an antique chandelier. The coral kitchen color blends in with the yellow of the dinning room. The space informs the process of color selection. Going out shopping together for a collection of linens, bedspreads, and towels ended up being a greta deal of fun as well.

As I walked into this M.D.’s room she had planned on painting green I noticed the samples covering the walls, and it became immediately clear that green is a much too global way to describe this multidimensional color. Greens, of all the primaries, have the widest spectrum of color variations and hue. I walked into the closet and pulled some green clothing that complimented her skin tone and personality. The colors of the walls should emphasize one’s uniqueness and individual beauty, especially bedrooms or bathrooms as they are intimate and natural focal points of the routines of life. Clients tend to have an intuitive sense of hue but need guidance around depth and chroma in the color. The green depicted above also had to complement the treasured Tibetan Tanka, the prints from Pompeii, and the distinct terracotta orange curtains.

A retired engineer and his wife with boundless amounts of energy and enthusiasm for life, in a home that overlooks the spectacular views of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, a subtle blue was chosen to indulge in the feeling of being among the mountain clouds. It complements the painting of the English artist Brian Flynn. And as you can only imagine, the lady of the house looks stunningly fabulous in the forefront of the blue walls in her master bedroom.