Year End Color - 2012- Yellow

So pretty much no one is writing blogs on Christmas Eve - But when you're waiting for kids to fall asleep so you can give the santa bat signal, you have time to kill.  So here are awesome yellow rooms.  I still really love a good yellow room.

Yellows

Eye Spy - Trends for Fall 2011

Remember last spring when I mused about wondering what the next trend in color would be?  Well, I think I've spotted a pretty clear trend that's begun and will probably take us well into 2012.
 
Often with color trends we see it first on the runway.  And fairly frequently it will be a color that was already a trend (think yellow and blue as mentioned in my 2011 trend post) but with a little twist.  I'm seeing a lot of mustard.  Especially lots of cute mustard dresses and clothes and accessories.  And now often paired with a turquoise or a teal or especially with a tiffany type of blue.  Here are a couple from pinterest I liked a lot - the shoes are from Etsy:

cute right?

And here are some of the ways I've seen it incorporated into decor lately:

I think we're going to see a lot more of that, and in conjunction with blue.

Design seeds has some mood boards along those lines that would be great to use if you are looking for paint color inpiration!

I really like the color trend.  I feel like it would look awesome with gray if you were thinking of going with gray walls but didn't want it to look too boring. 

I'm just speculating, but I think we're going to see more color blocking with bold colors too and especially maybe pinks and reds and oranges.  But more on that in another post!

2011 Paint Picks Part 4

Bold yellow is a big trend this year - on it's own, or as accent, especially popular with grays and blues. I happen to love yellow so I'm a fan of the trend.

Lots of awesome going on here (though I can totally live without the lamb/sheep thing - I know they are expensive but not a fan of those dudes) what I love is that turquoise yellow furniture with the yellow wallpaper - that color combination has a cool retro vibe that I love.  I ADORE the artwork on the wall, which also has a retro feel to me, but then the floor is very now. 

Very clean lines here, I love the style of the couch and the pillows make it great. 

red and yellow also look great together - and here I love how just that little rim of color makes a big impact. 

I'd like this even more if the yellow were more bold, but I still like it.

I dig this idea of painting the insides of the shelves!

This couch and that artwork are sooooooo fab. 

Such a fan of this, I'm pretty sure I used it before (And recently too) but I can't get enough of the mid century modern vibe here.  

I love the clever mixing of prints here with the unique yellow wall. 

yellow and gray is such a major trend right now and this room makes it super fun and cheery.

In my opinion this yummy buttercream-ish yellow is very hard to achieve, but if you can find the right shade for your room, I don't think you can beat it for cheerful AND serene. 

So fun - love the bold stripes, but I also adore that print on the yellow pillows and then the fact that they've paired it with houndstooth. 

I think it's hard to go wrong with yellow.

On the Outside...

xterior paint is something I haven't really discussed much on the blog before. Maybe because I'm much more likely to change the paint color on the interior of my house than the exterior. Although, when I moved into this house I changed the trim from a red/brown to Green and then to Black and the front door has gone through a similar transformation, from White to Green to Black to Red. The back of the house was Cream and is now Charcoal, and the garage door and posts in the front were plain White and I changed them to Cream...so really, I guess I change the paint color more often that I think.

In this post I want to talk about sort of interesting ideas for exterior paint colors and then in a few days I'll show you some local examples of houses I like with exterior paint colors that are slightly out of the ordinary. I'm not going to talk much about beige, because 1. most houses in AZ are already beige and therefore, bore me to death and 2. if you're seriously considering beige, I don't think you're reading this anyway.

(example of typical beige AZ house)







Some of these ideas are a little out there - but it's fun to see cool and interesting color and combinations when they work well.




I don't think many people are going to try this. Honestly, even though it looks okay here, even interesting, possibly cool, let's be honest, blue is probably the hardest house color to pull off (with the possible exception of purple...but more on that later). I do think it can work, but the shade of blue needs to really be just perfect. Here are some examples of houses done in blue which I think really do work, some of them border on a blue gray, which can be nice.






































































































Can any body really make a purple house look good? Well, I'll let you be the judge, these are best looking purple houses I could find:




























































My advice when considering purple? If you don't own a Victorian in Eureka California, I wouldn't attempt it.










A house color you almost NEVER see?





































Orange is pretty rare. But I really like both of these.

I also think red exteriors are underutilized, you see them with red brick, but there are some red and reddish brown colors as options for exterior paint that are very pleasing to the eye:

























































Interestingly, if you look at brochures from the 1950s, a lot of people painted their houses in yellows and greens, but over the years, those often got painted over in favor of white or beige. Here are couple of examples of ranch style homes of the 50s:





















Here are some yellow houses I think turned out cool:


































































































Some of these are a mustard bordering on beige but I like that tone.


There are actually a lot of greens which can work, here are a few that are somewhat unique:




















































Okay everyone can always make a white or a cream work, they are a common, but less boring than beige I think.





























































Not interested in white? How about a charcoal or a black. I am really loving this color on exteriors right now, hence my own choice of charcoal for the back of my house:





























































(my house exterior in the back...charcoal w/ red trim)















Gray exteriors are really nice. I highly recommend gray for people who don't want to commit to color.




















































Lastly, if you really want to go earthy and feel like picking a brown, consider something more chocolate or a little different (a friend mixed gray with brown for a great gray that leans brown on her exterior, pictures to follow in the next blog on exterior paint) than the lighter brown/beige you usually see.