Colour my home

On the weekend SIA spent time with a client at the paint counter of Bunnings hardware.

The client needed help with colour schemes in her home and SIA thinks they both needed help maintaining their sanity.

Colour confusion

You see, anyone who understands colour can break down some important elements to the following:

·       hue which is the pure colour

·       tint which is the pure colour with white added

·       shade which is the pure colour with black added

·       intensity/chroma/saturation is the purity of a hue such that highest intensity or purity is the hue as it appears in the spectrum or on the color wheel.
  

·       tone which is a hue with reduced intensity or dulled strength. The other word is that the hue is muted.

You create a tone in one of two ways. First by adding a neutral gray, equal in value to the hue. For example, a light gray added to yellow or a medium gray added to red or a dark gray added to violet.  Second by adding its complement.

·       undertone  using the cool v warm spectrum

This diagram says volumes about light v dark (vertical axis)
and clear v muted (horizontal axis). 

Now if you can understand all that without having studied colour, you are doing well.

The point of this post is very simple.

If you are doing colour for one room, fine, do it alone. You can only go wrong as far as one room.

If you are doing a whole house, I can almost promise you that you will get it wrong unless you bring in a colour expert to help you.

Why will you get it wrong?

Each paint company offers a gazillion hues as standard offerings, let alone mixing any colour you want. Mind you, the human eye can differentiate only about 150 hues.

Each hue has a gazillion tints, shades, tones and undertones.

I’ll repeat that.

Each hue has a gazillion tints, shades, tones and undertones.

That is scary.

To some extent hues, tints, shades and tones are a matter of personal preference.  The paint companies have colour cards which show pretty combinations of colours and they can help. 

But if you truly invested in your home, you will want more than the standard cards. As nice as they are, you want more - to match to upholstery, furniture, or re-create a room in a magazine. You want your own combination of colours, not the standard colour card.

If you mix colours, the process is of trial & error rather than science. You mix, you see how it looks, you mix again. And again. It can be a long frustrating process.

But if you understand colour – the tints/shades and the tones, you can reduce the trial and error by eliminating those that don’t work in harmony with the colour scheme. Less remaining options means more effective trial & error.

Enter the colour expert

A colour consultant can help you appreciate unusual combinations as well as take you back to basics. They will see possibilities you may miss. That’s what an expert does. Nothing earth shattering so far.

The real value which a colour consultant will add is more than just advising on pretty combinations. They will reduce your trial & error because they know which variations of the hues will work with your room, it's aspect and other colours around it.  They get you to the best outcome fast. Fast means less frustration and more time for other things. 

Undertones – warm v cool

Specifically, the expert understands undertones. Undertones are critical but they sneak up on you & make everything totally right or totally wrong.

Even if you understand cool & warm and you know your sunny yellow kitchen needs a warm white complement, it's hard. Since each paint company offers say, 20 whites – that’s a lot of variation which the human eye, let alone the mind, will struggle to process.

Undertones are like an X factor. When they are right, things feel right & things work – there is harmony in the room. When they are wrong, you may be uncomfortable but you don’t know why. More importantly, if you change the undertone to the more correct one, you will become more comfortable despite the fact that you made the most subtle of changes.

Paint companies

The paint companies have not thought to market paints in terms of these definitions – they think we are too stupid to understand it or that it is too complex to market the concepts. 

So when you look at the 20 versions of white, they aren’t marked for undertone, let alone tint and shade. Yes, you can ask the colour person behind the counter to look up the components on the computer so you have a better feel of what it comprises. But short of that, there is only trial & error. And more trial and error.

Enter a colour expert.

Because there are 20 versions of white in each paint brand’s standard colour chart. And that’s before you do any mixing.  

Big W - Peter Morrissey quilt sets

Went to Big W to check out the latest Peter Morrissey bed linen range.

I saw 4 styles:

Sorrento - black & white small dots with check border
Hamilton - white with navy border
Safari - black & grey animal print 
Hayman - large blocks of light & dark navy

There is also another set which is part of the same collection, but wasnt in the bunch I saw. Its called Noosa & it is white.

Cant comment on this as I didnt see it.

The ranges I looked at are separate to the plain coloured Peter Morrissey for Big W sets. I didnt examine the plain coloured sets.

Of the four sets I examined, all are 250 TC pure cotton ("excluding trims").
They are available in Queen ($79) & King ($84). 
As far as I saw they are only quilt sets (not sheet sets).
Each quilt set includes the doona cover, 2 pillowcases & 2 euro pillowcases.  

Here's the weird bit - after hearing on cyber space that these had all sold out, I called a store to ask whether they had any. The SA knew nothing & so I spoke to his manager - I asked the manager whether the sheet sets also had two of the normal sized pillowcases (ie: some duplication) given that the quilt sets had two normal sized pillowcases. He assured me they did. The weird thing is today I didnt see any sign of sheet sets to match this quilt cover. I think the guy must have been smoking something....

Firstly the glossy pictures of the range looked amazing. The quality of the actual sheets was totally OK & up to my standard. Note though that I didnt remove them from their packets so you may have a different outcome here. However, when you look close up at the work done to get the prints, I noticed it was all embroidery (ie: not a print woven into the fabric) & I wasnt pleased with the finish of that embroidery.

Problem: Embroidery at the high street level is the cheapest way you can make prints. They just program the machines with the pattern & away it goes. Its a process with minimal human supervision. 

I dont like high street embroidery for three (3) reasons: 

Firstly, the embroidery results in a messy look because the machines dont fully cover the fabric in the satin stitch when they are making a pattern - they roughly cover it - enough to form the pattern but you can then see the fabric colour underneath. Basically, if the manufacturers went the other way & made the embroidery dense, the item will be more costly to make. So they make it un-dense! 

This is HAMILTON: Notice how the satin stitch which borders the navy bands is made up of a whole  lot of zig zag done "tightly".  When its done this tight, its called satin stitch.  Now notice how the satin stitch isnt properly filled? ie You can see the fabric colour underneath & the stitch isnt dense....

Here is the Hamilton bed.

Here is the Sorrento bed.

and the Sorrento packaging

This is SORRENTO: Notice how you can see the white cotton fabric through the stitches which form the black squares? ie: the satin stitch isnt dense.

Secondly, there is also the issue of running out of thread sporadically, so you see the loose threads on the garment each time they finish the spool. Since its high street, no one will spare the time or the money to push the lose threads into the wrong side of the fabric. Result: a messy garment. Safari was a worst one in terms of this issue, because it had the largest areas of print done via embroidery (so you are more likely to run out of thread mid-pattern).

See how all the threads are showing?  

More loose threads...

& more loose threads...

Thirdly, because the embroidery is done with large & loose stitches, it tends to pull easily. Lord knows how many times I have snagged cushion & linen embroidery with a finger nail let alone a coat hanger, handbag etc.

Here is the Safari packaging....

  
Finally I looked at Hayman.
Hayman is a French (dark) navy & bright navy combo, sewn together with a white strip in between.

The white strip felt like cotton gauze with a type of fagotting on it. The fagotting had a large open pattern - it is possible that it could lead to pulling. 

Hayman had no embroidery so I preferred it on this basis.

Hayman is the most masculine of the four sets I examined.

So we have now covered the mechanics of the quilt sets.
The only thing left is the price & hence value comparison. 

Since I am a Target sheets fan, I cant resist a direct comparison with Target.....

The sets are marginally cheaper than Target.
The sets include "bonus euro cushions" so the value factor increases more (Target sets only ever include the basic pillow cases - euros are sold separately).

But Target has alot more variety in its prints & specifically, it has a very very extensive range of prints that are not embroidered. 

The interesting thing with the Morrissey sets is that even though we are going into winter, they all exude a Hamptons/nautical feel.  My preference is to find a Target set with this same feel which has no embroidery. Frankly, I am not sure whether to risk the Hayman set (my fave of the four). 

Dont get me wrong - I think they are terrific value for money.
But for the various reasons stated, I would probably not invest in these (although I did like Hayman).

Would love to hear your thoughts.

Easter homewares - Bed, Bath & Table

Found some cool easter themed homewares today at Bed, Bath & Table.

These 100% cotton tea towels are $10 each.

I really like the white ceramic trinket  on the left of the top shelf of this next photo....

Cute decorative eggs...

more cute decorative eggs which can be hung

Love the egg plate in the pretty colours....

Short & sweet.

Visit Bed, Bath & Table.