This One is for Julie - Brown Rooms?

ecently someone asked for advice regarding decorating their new house and then confessed a strong like for all things brown. I am not a big brown fan. Brown has been a trend for a while paired with pink or blues for kids and before that it was a trend in a milky chocolate or dark chocolate as an accent wall. I've never been a huge fan of any of these trends. But who cares what I think? There IS a way to make brown a good choice.

I am in the middle of a re-model project at my house and coming up will be posts on what inspires me, exactly how I chose a paint color and then how I make other choices as to what will add to the room. As far as I am concerned a room is never really done. I'm always seeing something I would like a little different. Or finding a new color I want to use somewhere. Here's the great thing about paint - it's relatively cheap AND you can always change it easily if you get it on the wall and you don't like it!

In terms of brown. I think the worst thing a person can do when they move into a suburban house where the walls are all painted beige or some version of beige/brown is to leave them all that way and try to decorate around them. Your house is going to look the same as every other house in your subdivision because developers typically only have a couple of paint colors that they use, they don't want to be messing around with having to mix new colors all the time - they buy massive quantities (VATS) of paint and everyone's house ends up with the same colors. Then when people move into those houses they find it overwhelming to consider how they would change it all up - they have no desire to start painting the entire house AND frankly, they have no idea where to start in the decision making process anyway. So the walls typically stay beige. Maybe they paint one accent wall.

Here's my advice. Start in the room you care about the most. Maybe it's the first room people enter when they come over - that's usually been my preference. That first room gives people the impression of who you are as a person and gives them an idea about the rest of the house. The rest of the house actually may not look as polished and put together as that one room. But you've got to start somewhere. If it's a small little entry way - great, less space to fret over - if it's a great room/kitchen combination, it's a little more daunting. But still doable.

I'm still not sold on Brown rooms. For some other possible color inspiration see: Here or Here or check out the side bar where there are links to many color possibilities.

Something I think should strongly be considered when choosing brown as your main color though - if it's going to be your main color then it should mainly only be your wall color, but there has to be a secondary and tertiary color that make the room pop. Good choices with Brown include almost any color under the sun because brown is a neutral - so it can be easily paired with yellow, orange, green, blue, pink, red, even in some cases purple (though a bit trickier it can look cool) and certainly all the shades of white. I'd avoid too much black. The brown is already dark and when you start adding black it really bores the room down to a degree that you'll only ever want to sleep there. I once saw a very expensive home in Scottsdale where the homeowners were in love with beige/brown walls with black and white accents. It bored me so much I wanted to cry. To me, that house had absolutely no personality at all. Those are ALL neutral colors. You have to pick at least one color that is not neutral.

Okay so for now, some brown rooms I don't dislike (I'm sorry the jpgs are so small, I'm not sure what happened but I don't have time to fix the problem right now):

Okay that's a brown wall but look at how they've dared to add the flower detailing to the wall with the pink accents and the white.

One of my personal favorites with brown is white and orange. I mean, if I were doing it, that's how I would go.

Here they've gone with a cream and pretty blue. I still wish the chair were more colorful though.




Okay so the walls here are beige and windows and being carpet and beige window treatments which could be super boring, plus, the couch is brown. But they've managed to pull it out with the architectural detailing, both in the windows and the table plus all the pink accents.


Okay not really enough color here for me - they've really only done black and white and brown, which as I told you, I'm not a fan of. But see that reflections of something blue on the black counter top? That makes me feel like if there were a bunch of blue accents in this room, I might like it a lot more.



This is a boys room - but I love the greens and the map with the brown. This color combination would look great in any room.


This room is very traditional, so ignore that if that's not your thing. But look how nice that pop of pink and the light pink, almost lilac chairs make this room look lovely. Also, I'm liking the brown, it's not a typical brown.

This is from one of my favorite designers (Ryan Brown) - what I like here is the walls are totally beige, but nothing else about this room is boring with the striped accenting on the pillows and ottomans and the carpet and the PAINTED CEILING which matches the green in the carpet, and that awesome ceiling light, this room is anything but boring brown/beige.

Okay so if you're still thinking about brown here's your next assignment. Go to the paint store - go to home depot, but also go to a specialty paint store like Dunn Edwards, Sherwin Williams, Frazee, Dutch Boy, etc. and pick up every paint sample of every brown you even think you remotely like (do the same thing with any other color that you're seriously considering) and in my next post will talk about how to narrow it down to the right one.