Clash your colors this Christmas!

Apartment Therapy

Since we will be off for the next two weeks we thought we should leave you with our perspective on color ideas for Christmas. Hey, everyone else is writing about it and we wanted to get in on the fun too. We here at Colour Studio, being highly cross disciplinary and studious about our color choices, will of course be recommending that you stick with red and green schemes this year. Elegance and complimentary color science above all. It's all very serious around here. Just kidding. While we are all for elegance, it can get a bit staid. Why not stray from the usual and expand your palette this year? 

Re-Nest

Now we are sure that most of you have boxes of family ornaments stashed away safely in the basement or garage. Those little treasures are wonderful and bring back cherished memories every year. But maybe with those traditions throw in a color twist. Try painting some new bulbs in bright eye catching colors or head down to the dollar store and grab a box of recyclable plastic bulbs, throw in some glitter, and get your chromatic confidence going! These bright  Christmas trees from Apartment Therapy have such energy! 

Apartment Therapy

Apartment Therapy

Apartment Therapy

Apartment Therapy

If you need more inspiration try heading over to Apartment Therapy and Re-Nest. We love them! Their sites are full of great colors. There are lots of options for some DIY color splashes: DIY Decorations from Re-nest or contemporary colored ornaments from Indie Pretty Projects.

- Emily Eifler, Associate Designer, Colour Studio

Ode to the Crayon

Inspired by our Project Manager Naomi and her "Color Outside the Lines" notebook we thought we could regress a bit this week and take a little trip down color memory lane. Many of us had our first introduction to color with crayons. 

We all loved to draw as kids, with a lack of talent but lots of enthusiasm. Crayons were one of the first introductions to pure color for many people. Before we had Photoshop to deliver almost any color with the click of the mouse, those little wax treasures brought the blue of the sky or the green of an tree down to kid size, literally made color tangible, usable and understandable. They even had that distinct caryon-y smell, ah the sense memories. 

So this week we are looking at coloring and crayons with grown up eyes. But we weren't the only ones to mature over the years, crayons have grown up too.

In 2010 Diem Chau, of The Pleasure of Tiny Things blog, was commissioned to carve 66 of these beautiful crayon soccer players for Nike in honor of the World Cup. They were put in eleven special VIP boxes designed by Wieden and Kennedy. 

Sculptor Peter Goldlust has also been taking a new look at the crayon with these beautifully carved geometric crayon pieces.  

Artist Christian Faur uses thousands of crayons to create an "pixalized" images, one point of color at a time. This work brings the crayon to digital image manipulation transition that comes with age in to sharp relief. 

But what rediscovery of crayons would be complete without a look at our long lost favorite colors of childhood. And what do you know, the folks over at wikipedia were helpful enough to provide hex numbers for all the Crayola crayons of our youth. Their list is wonderful, we never realized how many specialty crayons were out there. Along with the standard colors we can also choose from the silver swirls, gem tones, pearl brights, or metallic FX collections. Adult eyes also reveal details children rarely notice. For example one color name carries with it the history of racism and political correctness in America; "Chestnut" was originally called "Indian Red" until 1999. 

So now that we have scoured though all those crayon colors we threw together a few palettes. If you need a bit of whimsy and wax smell for your next project consider some crayon inspiration. There are some great projects out there if you need help getting started recycled crayons, window decorations, or wreathes and frames.

- Emily Eifler, Associate Designer, Colour Studio

Lime Green

Sorry for the hiatus, thanksgiving got the better of us and we have been busy busy busy. So to make it up to you a post all about lime green. Our associate designer, Emily, is currently on the hunt for a new home in San Francisco and during one of her many open house Sunday's she walked by this beautiful entryway. After seeing one boring color scheme after another it was definitely a welcome surprise. We are avid fan of lime greens, especially for architectural and interior design applications. We did a lime green entry way ourselves not to long ago.

Such inspiration sent us on a mission to find the perfect lime green palette for Emily's future home.

Lime green, chartreuse, yellow green, electric green, margarita, green apple. There are a wealth of of hues to pick from in this range. Its a bold choice, and certainly not for everyone, but for you color adventurers out there it could that extra zing you need.

Most of the interiors we have found match lime green up with neutrals like calm modern gray, clean white, and even straight laced black so as not to overwhelm the eye.

Notice that even the barest hint of lime accentuates the green of the exterior plants and makes the space expand to visually include the outdoors. 

While floor to ceiling lime green walls may be to much for an entire room, it can give energy and motion to an tight or neglected stairway. Stairways are a liminal space between floors and not generally given much consideration but here lime green gives a stairway a fresh personality all its own. 

The next two interior designs use lighter versions of the lime green as a base and add just a few splashes of its brighter sibling. Its visually links the two colors without putting lime green everywhere.

Just varying the brightness value can break up overwhelming colors. 

Lime green is young, playful and refreshing and according to a few color phycology sites lime green helps clear bad thoughts from the mind and promotes motivation. We are in need of all of those things. So here is our palette for lime green, we hope to use again in the near future. 

- Emily Eifler, Associate Designer, Colour Studio