Color

In the 1970s a gentleman I worked for had me paint front doors red. It didn’t make any difference what the house looked like the door was red. He is a very successful Real Estate agent so it must have been working for him. Another developer wanted a grape color for the doors of a questionable condominium project. We had four doors of different purples before he picked the right one. It was interesting that this project sold out before another of his projects that was more traditional.

The theory is that red or purple stimulates an emotional response from a potential buyer. A property manager I worked for had my guys paint a bathroom lime green in a unit he wanted the tenant out of. Green, like a Mister Yuk sticker, was this guys way of letting a tenant know the were on shaky ground. We didn’t do a lot of work for that manager, but the princliple of emotional response was the same.

At the end of the 1980s more places were white, on white, with beige to give a buyer the feeling of an empty canvas. My garage had, without question, six rolls of beige carpet at a time in it. The thing was that the carpet would go in and the new owners would take it right back out. It was kind of a stupid cycle until the hardwood floor refinishing thing started in the 1990s.

Rich colors have always had a place in Real Estate. Red, yellow, blue, and green with deep tones for accents are used extensively to create drama in a home. The trick and reasoning is to accentuate a feature or draw an out side influence into the house. You can direct the eye to or away from some features. There again some areas may need to be brightened.

We talk a lot about painting dark cabinets a light color. Basements are painted white to add a feeling of space and light. Painting floor joists white in an open ceiling basement gives the illusion of heighth. Some Real Estate agents or fixers insist all the ceilings in a house should be painted white but that isn’t the best idea. Some rooms need a cozier feel to them and also painted a ceiling white can draw the eye away from some good features. In addition some rooms have a tendency to look smaller by having the ceiling white. The walls can close in when there is a light above, kind of like being in a mine shaft.

I’ll say there are no set rules in Real Estate which is true. Colors however need to be specific to your buyer pool. There are also architectual specific colors. A French Colonial is blue grey, while an American Colonial is taupe.  Of course there are exceptions such as the Renaisance Rival home we painted orange in the living and sitting rooms to accomodate an extensive African Art collection. The owner and I clashed over the idea. She won and I was very wrong.

Some decorators have a box full of colors that they are dying to try out. For the purposes here I encourage sticking with the basics. We did a remodeled rambler with cathedral ceilings and skylights with a rust red and british green intersecting walls. Not truly intersecting because the back wall of an open hallway is the green and the dining room wall that seperated it from the kitchen is painted rust. Your eye is stopped at the end of the orange wall giving an illusion that the two walls might be meeting. It’s a very cool effect.

I’ll say that it has only been in the past five years that my use of color has returned to me. As I said, at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s a very conservative design trend took over. The response to the avocado greens and sunlight yellows was kind of a back lash. Today the deep dark colors of the American Heritage period of 1976 have come back in a big way.

There are also some things that can be fixed with color. We painted hundreds of houses alabaster and ipswich. Alabaster is beige and ipswich is a dark chocolate brown. The ipswich trim keeps you from looking to closely at the windows. It’s funny that there can be blistering or cracking paint covered over with the brown that no one seems to notice. It’s like an invisible sheild. People have a tendency to overlook some things that don’t draw thier attention or repulse them. A bad color can divert an eye if it’s blended in like it’s supposed to belong. The mind dismisses it as a bad idea.

In the fixer business people talk about cleaning, painting, and landscape. Both painting and landscape can relate to colors. Many Real Estate agents talk about getting color in the landscape for curb appeal. I just tried putting some beach balls into a yard for color. It seemed to work. It was sort of like the children were outside playing and left thier toys. I’ve also painted lawn furniture bright colors or porches and doors as I first mentioned. There was a time that I tried to keep an indoor outdoor theme. That was a set of colors that continued from the curb to the upstairs master bathroom. It didn’t work. People are pretty smart when looking at a place and to them it looked contrived.

Today, with staging companies, it’s best to consult with the stager before picking colors. If the furniture is there it’s best to pick colors accordingly. I mentioned the orange and African Art collection. The owner of the collection had always wanted the orange walls. As long as we were there to prepare for sale she wanted the opportunity to high light the collection. I was against the collection being on display. It is valuable. In addition some of the pieces stuck out from the wall an uncomfortable distance. There are also some spindly statuettes that could have been been knocked over. What actually happened is that with the orange walls and dark wood of the collection (I should have mentioned that the art collection was of masks carved out of dark African wood) there was a church feeling of awe when you walked into the room. People stayed in the middle of the room in a kind of art gallery stance. Hand on chin, kind of arms folded sort of thing. It was the quite time of the showing process and the house sold quickly.

Paint and painting I’ll address at another time. This is about color. Infusing color into a home by paint, art or furniture are all ways of generating that emotional response. A stager who did a little house in my neighborhood brought in an array of brightly colored pieces. After the sale when the art and furniture had ben removed I was shocked that the little house was painted completely white. There was a little bit of mint green in the kitchen trim and that was it.

While previewing the house and talking with the stager I was thinking in the back of my mind that she had gone over board in having little pictures or statues everywhere. On the back porch our in the utility room there was stuff. It was sparsely done but, everywhere. The floor rugs were that ragged cloth type of broad weave and bright colors. I don’t even know what the flooring was. All I remember is that the little house was bright and fun. In reality it was rather poorly constructed with cheap white paint.

The interesting thing is that the stager who brought in the furniture was extremely deliberate. We’ll talk about staging at a different time. I saw another of the houses she did with oriental rugs, carved wooden furniture, and subtle prints. The diffence was striking in that the same woman was giving two very opposite impressions. As bright as the little house was this house was dark and brooding. The impression was of a sophisticated scholar sitting in front of the stone fireplace reading a book. It was inviting in a way that you would view an in city retreat by being soothed and relaxed.

Again in this house the walls were white. The lay out was odd by having an open kitchen set between the living room on the right and the dinning room on the left. You came into the counter of the kitchen from the front door. There was obviously a wall there at one time and the openness of the front of the house was nicely divided by staging.

To the back of this house you went up a little staircase to what was a master bedroom and walk in closet. It was an architects dream that didn’t finish out well. She had packed the master bath with rolled towels, baskets, and fuzzy rugs. There was nothing that could be done inside the master bedroom. All I really remember is looking outside at a very nice unfinished garden of stone and seeing a yellow background with red lobsters on a patio table umbrella.

I was very surprised to find that house sell for full price quickly. The front of the house was a dark green with copper gutters. The roof was shake and the front landscaping was mounded cedar bark with evergreen plantings. There was nothing to be done with the oppressive feel of the house. What she had done was make it sophisticated.

Color is a tool. It’s as subtle as a summers breeze or as powerful as a hurricane. For all of the talk about construction or kitchen remodels many fixers have simply painted thier way into a fortune. Knowing your colors helps.