Colours in Business Settings: Offices

Looking to paint your office space? Consider blue. The colour blue lowers blood pressure, calms people, and makes them feel more creative. It increases productivity and reduces conflict. In many ways, it's the perfect workplace colour.

On the other hand, red has been shown to make people more attentive to detail and more careful, while green calms people and makes them feel more centered.

So it may depend what effect you're going for.

At Courtney & Wise, Pty, we've been enjoying this new palette from Dulux for office spaces:



A combination of blue-green shades with blue-toned neutrals, it gives a creative yet calming feel, with lots of different possibilities.

Colours in Business Settings: Restaurants

Choosing interior colours for a business can be a different process from choosing colours for a home.

For example, a restaurant should take advantage of the fact that red tones stimulate the appetite. When people look at red shades, they breathe faster and their hearts beat faster. They lose track of time , and they eat and drink more. In a restaurant, this translates to increased profits.

In the picture here, a bright red wall looks just right with the pizza. But bright red isn't the only option. A more upmarket look can be created with rich cinnabar or deep crimson. A clover pink, dark enough to have the effect of red, can have a young, fun look. Reddish browns and red-orange shades can give an earthy or masculine feel. All these shades will have the right physiological effect.

Combine red with yellow in peach shades or in a combination of warm shades, and you can have the increased appetite along with a desire to hurry and leave -- that's how psychologists say a yellow room affects us. If you want customers to hurry up and eat, and move on from the table so that others can sit down, then this colour trick might be the one for you.

Avoid blue, though. Blue lessens the appetite and makes people feel calm. They'll eat less and stay longer if you have blue walls.

Still, no matter what you want to do to people's heart rates, you still want them to enjoy their meals and tell their friends about your restaurant. And you still want to make your space look its best. Consider hiring professional decorators to help you find the best possible colour combination for your needs.

Touching Up Painted Walls

If your walls look like this, you need to call Courtney & Wise right away.

Maybe you just need a little touch up, though.

In that case, here's what to do:

• Spackle any holes, and fill and cracks between the baseboard or other trim and the wall with caulk.
• Let the spackle or caulk dry completely, sand it, and clean thoroughly to remove any dust.
• Pour paint into a small container.
• Use a small brush, and dip it into the paint container only about halfway.
• Paint the area needing attention. Use a feathering motion to blend the new paint into the old.

Let paint dry completely before checking the colour, since wet paint will look darker.

Storing Paint

Congratulations, your home is newly painted! You've got your fresh new look, and you've got a bit of paint left in case you need a touch-up.

You do have a bit of paint for touch-ups, don't you? It's easy to scrape a wall when shifting the furniture back into place, to lose a bit of finish to a scratching cat or dog, or to end up with an indelible mark after a party -- even a kids' birthday party. It can be very hard to match paint exactly, especially if it's been a while and you're not sure of the colour name or number. Even "white" can mean a lot of different shades.

So save some paint. That's half the battle. The other half is to keep the paint usable. Here's how:

• Seal the can tightly. Clean the can and lid before closing it. Don't hammer the lid on, or you may distort the shape and keep it from sealing properly.
  
• Store it upside down, so the paint itself makes an airtight seal.
• Keep it in a place with an even temperature -- paint can deteriorate if it's frozen and thawed repeatedly, or if it's in direct heat or sun.

When you need to fix up your painted surface a little, you'll have the paint you need.

Aussie Painting and Decorating Team

Kyle French represents Aussies on the Painting and Decorating team at the Calgary WorldSkills International. This competition pits apprentices from around the world against one another in trials not of sports, but of practical skills. Watch Kyle in the Wallpaper Speed Challenge to see why he is in line for "Fastest Pastebrush in the World."

Kyle went into the family painting and decorating business, and now he's won the Medal of Excellence for Australia in the field of painting and decorating.

Good on you, Kyle!

Sydney's Government House

The drawing room at Government House doesn't look a great deal like ours -- how about yours?

You can go have a look, actually, since Government House in Sydney is open for tours. Decorations have changed a lot over the years, from this fancy look in the nineteenth century to wallpaper in the beginning of the twentieth century, plain white walls in the 1960s, and now an exciting mix of deep crimson and gold that meshes modern Australian sensibilities with the grandeur of the past.

Bright Colours

Do you love bright colours?

Do you love them this much? People trying to rest in this room may feel that they're being roasted. It might be better to use colours of this intensity in a focus wall, as described in our last post, rather than on all the surfaces as shown in this room.

You can also soften the punch of a really bright colour by pairing it with a complementary colour or with neutrals. This orange room could have a greyed blue on the floor or touches of sand or whitein soft furnishings, to tone down the intensity a bit.

Decorating with a Focus Wall

Spring is coming, and with the change of seasons many of us feel that we want change in ourselves -- our routines, our wardrobes, and our homes.

If you're not ready to repaint or redecorate your entire home, consider a focus wall. This is a wall painted in a new and different colour from the rest of the room. Here, a room done in soft greys gets a punch of red in a media wall.

This one wall gives the whole room a new look.

You Did What?!

In the article we shared with you Wednesday, Michael explained how he picked out the gables, strappings, fretwork, and corbels... and some of you said "What?!"

• gables: triangles formed by the peak of a roof. In the picture above, you can see two gables.
  
• strappings: narrow boards put together to make a decorative surface. In the picture above, the white strapping stands out from the wall.
  
• fretwork: designs cut into a panel for decorative effect, in the past most often with a fretsaw. Fretwork trims the porch above.
  
• corbels: fancy decorative brackets traditionally made of wood or stone. The corbels aren't showing above, but there's a picture of a plain one below.

You see how picking out the architectural details of a house can make the whole thing look more stylish. The same is true inside the house.

A Grand Old Lady gets a New Birthday Suit ... and Almost Wins an Award!

For those fortunate enough to reach the century milestone, a telegram from the Queen is the birthday present we look forward to the most. But for “Llandilo”, an elegant and charming Spencer Road residence, its 100 years birthday was also celebrated in style with a Courtney & Wise colour and coat rejuvenation.

As explained by Michael Peters, Managing Director of Courtney & Wise; “The owners read the Mosman 2008 article on the Mosman property we painted that won the Master Painters Award for Excellence in 2006. It must have made an impression on them, because about 18 months after the article appeared, they contacted me to discuss the birthday present they were planning for “Llandilo”, their family home of over 32 years.”

“Although we gave the house a more contemporary feel with the main colour scheme, we still retained its Federation heritage by picking out and highlighting all decorative features such as gables, strappings, fretwork corbels, even the front picket fence. We applied this approach to both the exterior and interior colour schemes. The clients had a true vision of what they wanted to achieve which we helped them to articulate and the result speaks for itself” says Michael.

Impressed with the way the old girl came back to life after the re-paint, the decision was made to enter the project into this year’s Master Painters Awards for Excellence which were announced in July.

"The category that we entered was a highly competitive and prestigious one, so we were very proud of making it through as a finalist. The winning project was superb and very deserving of their award. Although we didn’t win an award for this house and its lovely clients, we did win the Timber Finishes award for another project we completed at Avalon, so we were pleased with our achievements on the night.”

As a postscript to this story, it has since been discovered that “Llandilo” might be even more youthful than she looks.

The home owner said, “My daughter recently researched the development and ownership of
this house and while the land was offered as part of the Holt Estate subdivision in 1902, it’s not until 1917 that the first listing of anyone living here is found. This is a bit of a puzzle as the house definitely looks as though it was built around the same time as the adjoining properties. We always assumed the house was the same age as its neighbours, but it now appears that we may have been a little premature in celebrating its 100-year birthday. I’m sure she won’t mind because Courtney & Wise have definitely given her a new lease on life, whatever her age.”

For more information contact
Courtney & Wise
Tel: 9958 1099
www.courtneyandwise.com.au

MOSMAN 2088 MAGAZINE - September 09 13