If you’re going to go pink, go bold
Colour can spread cheer in a home
Q: I know you often use pink, and I’d like to paint my open-concept condo fuchsia. I’ve lived with white for a few years, but I’m thinking I should just do a feature wall from the hallway into the kitchen and living room. Paint is cheap. I figure why not try? A: Ooh, I do love pink, but I loathe feature walls. There, it’s out there. I get asked about feature walls all the time. They look like giant paint tests to me. Plus, I always recall the words of beloved Toronto television personality and designer Ray Staples, who used to ask homeowners, “Did you run out of paint?” when referring to feature walls. The colour of a room’s walls should envelope you and make your heart skip a beat, whether the space is bright and airy, dark and moody or dramatically hot pink.
A fuchsia wall from the hallway through to the kitchen and living area might make your space feel unbalanced. As soon as I read the description of your condo, I thought of a striking pink space (the heartbeat-skipping kind), designed by Timothy Mather.
For high-impact results, take your lead from Timothy and paint every wall pink. Timothy also used pink fabric on the chairs to further amp up the room’s colour. I’m not saying that every chair, table and vase needs to be pink, but repeating the colour will give your room depth.
In fact, the reason Timothy’s design works so beautifully is that the checkerboard floor and high-gloss chocolate-brown cabinetry balance the room. You’ll also notice that he didn’t paint the ceilings. “I often paint the fifth wall — the ceiling — a colour, but in this case I felt that we needed a relief from the saturated colour, like a sorbet in between complex courses,” Timothy says.
As far as paint goes, you’re right, a gallon is relatively cheap, but the actual painting of a wall or room can be time-consuming and costly. Against my better judgment and to satisfy a client, I once accented a hallway wall in red. The client didn’t like the shade. And I didn’t like the way it made the small condo feel off-kilter, as though you were walking down one of the hallways in the movie The Shining.
But let’s get back to the pink. Many design greats, from Dorothy Draper to David Hicks, Miles Redd and of course Timothy Mather, have painted rooms pink.
The colour is happy and cheerful and has the power of making everything look good — pillows and people alike. So be bold and paint away (all four walls), knowing that you’ll be giving yourself and your furniture a healthy glow.