Natural vs. Synthetic Paints

Synthetic paints have some real advantages.  They don't generally react chemically with the surfaces they're painted on, or with underlying paints, as natural paints can. They can be more durable, as well, and the cost may be lower.

Synthetic paints have some serious problems. Most are based on petroleum, and since they're oil-based, they're fat soluble and can be absorbed into skin and lungs. They emit chemicals that are harmful to the environment. They also use up resources that can't be renewed.

Water-based paints are an alternative. Until recently, they weren't as effective or as attractive as oil-based paints, but newer formulations and beautifully saturated, long-lasting, and better for the environment of your home and the larger environment as well. 

Natural oil-based paints are the new industry darling. Castor oil in particular is turning up in the newest paints. It creates a waterproof surface for concrete floors, yet lets wood breathe and avoid mould. It soaks into porous surfaces like wood and dries quickly.

The Australian Paint Approval Scheme helps you choose the most environmentally sound paints, whether they use natural or synthetic ingredients.Your professional painter can advise you on the best choices for the job you have in mind.

Design Inspirations from Art

Inspiration for home decorating can come from magazines, books, and television shows. It can come from things you saw on your travels or your favorite colours or a piece of pottery or your own back garden.

Some inspirations are easier to translate than others, though. Seeing a room you love with a particular style of divan or a particular sort of wallpaper can lead directly to a similar look in your own home. What if you love the images above, though? How does that help you think about your home decor?

The two pictures are very different: a classical Roman scene on the left, and a romanticized modern take on Asian art on the right. You can certainly pick one and use it alone but the steps are the same even if you decide you can't choose between them. 

First, analyze the images. The one on the left has symmetrical lines and simple shapes with shades of ochre and grey. The one on the left has oranges and greens with touches of yellow, and its lines are sinuous and flowing. Both have ancient architectural elements,strong contrast from dark to light, warm tones, lots of texture, and a mix of straight and curved lines.

In your home, you can use all the characteristics you identify, though you might not use them in exactly the way they're used in the artworks you've chosen.

For example, you could use the golds shared by the two images throughout your home, adding grey in the living room and the luscious oranges for the bedroom, with green and grey in the bathroom and kitchen. Flowing draperies in both pictures could translate to flowing fabrics in your home, perhaps with classic symmetrical window treatments in the living room and something freer and more romantic in the bedroom. A variety of highly textured natural materials like stone, silk, and metal would work in every room, and classical shapes from the image on the left can be found easily in decorative objects for the various rooms.

Analysis and synthesis lead to satisfying design that isn't copied from the inspiration pieces, but which you'll love in the same way you love the art that inspired you.

Home Decorating 101: Creation

Once you've completed the evaluation and inspiration steps, you're ready to create your new room decorating plan.

You need to get this down somewhere where you can refer to it in the future, so grab some paper or choose an online tool like these:

• BH&G Room Arranger
• Floorplanner
• Room Planner

Divide the room into areas with the functions you've identified for your room. For example, a living room might have an area for conversation, an area for playing music, and an area for reading. A kitchen  might have an area for cooking, an area for storing food, and an area for eating. Sometimes the areas will overlap, and that's fine. You just want to be sure that your conversation area has places for people to sit and look at one another, while your eating area has a place to put food and places to sit.

Place your furniture into the plan, and draw in furniture you'll need to buy. Measure the existing furniture, as well as the space for needed furniture. Fill in colours, patterns, and any special objects such as plants or pianos.

Feel free to change the plan and make many different plans. It's much easier to change your mind on paper than in a real room.

Once you love it, you're ready. Call Courtney & Wise at  9958 1099 if you're in Sydney, or your local painter/decorator if you're not, to get a booking for the work you need done. Begin any cleaning, mending, and shopping needed. You're on your way to a fabulous new room!

Home Decorating 101: Inspiration

With the basic information for your room figured out -- its functions, scope, and budget -- you can start dreaming about the perfect room and looking for inspiration.

Make a file of photos from magazines, set up a board at Pinterest or weheartit, or use an app like SnapShop to collect photos as you scout furniture shops and showrooms. Either virtually or in your physical world, create a dream board that gets all the things you love in a room together in one place.

Then look for the patterns, the touchstones.

If your examples are all blue and white, it's safe to say that you want a blue and white room. Sometimes it's not so simple, though. Your ideas may all be quite different at first glance, in which case you have to search for the common thread.

Maybe your room should be romantic, or you like an Asian influence. Perhaps it's not so much colour or style that brings all your favorite rooms together, but clean straight lines and organization. Maybe you prefer an upscale look, or a high-fashion effect.

It can take a lot of hunting and gathering to get a clear idea of what you want in a room, but it's worth the trouble. Knowing exactly what you want beforehand saves time, trouble, and money, as well as increasing your chances of getting exactly what you want.

Home Decorating 101: Evaluation

The first thing to do when embarking on a home decorating project is to evaluate the situation.

Function What will the room be used for most often? If the room is empty all day and comes alive in the evenings for parties and meetings of charitable organizations, it needs different decor than a room which has small children playing in it all day, with family TV and take away vindaloo in the evenings.

Givens What is already present and can't be changed? This includes the size and shape of the room, the placement of the windows, and typically also things like fireplaces or structural columns. It might also include major pieces of furniture which can't be replaced or beloved works of art.

Budget The size of your budget should be part of the evaluation. If money is no object, you can think about adding a bay window and buying new appliances. If you're being frugal, fresh paint and rearranging the furniture should be the first things that come to mind.

Measure and draw the room, take photos or add samples of any materials or objects that can't be changed, and make a list of the activities that take place in the room. Then you'll be ready to think about the next steps.

Saturation and Proportion

We looked last time at fall 2012 fashion colours from international arbiter Pantone. Some of the colours may be great in a dress, but hard to imagine on four walls. That may not mean we won't want them in our homes, though. It's all about saturation and proportion

Saturation is a measure of how bright and intense a colour is. This year's deep red oranges are very saturated, as are the ultramarine greens and the intense blues. On the other hand, we've also seen shades that were just one step away from a neutral, as in the lilacs that are nearly grey or the warm whites.

Very saturated colours make a strong statement. In large doses, they can make your room seem smaller. In the pictures above, we see how small pops of saturated colour can be refreshing. Ultamarine green on small spaces in a mostly white room, a piece of tangerine furniture, or a bright pink accent in a room can be energizing without being overwhelming.

This is the point about proportion. A room that uses 60% grey and 20% gold, with white and black for the remaining 20% has just enough saturated colour to be exciting. One accent wall in chartreuse with plenty of white can be just enough.

Pantone's Fall 2012 Colours, Fashion, and Paint

Pantone's Fall 2012 fashion colour report gives us more chocolate brown, yellowed green, mustard yellow, and spicy pink, colours we loved last year. It brings in the deep orange, true blue, grey, and lilac we've been hearing about in 2012 colour predictions in general. There's an ultramarine green and a rosy beige that could update an office or beach house beautifully.

What's all this got to do with painting and decorating? What's the connection between fashion and home decor?

Simple. Makers of furniture and home decorating items will be using these tasty colours, too. We're seeing ultramarine and tangerine in sofas, cushions, duvets, and kitchen goods. Lilacs and greys are coming together in elegant living rooms and rose beige is turning up in upholstery.

This palette is what the fashionable home will be wearing this season -- maybe not on the walls, but in the next vase or picture frame you fall in love with.

Be ready.

Online Colour Scheme Tools

We don't always start our decorating plans from nothing. What if we have furnishings and accents already, and need to choose a colour scheme that will bring them together? One approach is to try out lots of possibilities. You can speed up the process with online tools.

Our example householder is moving into a new flat. She has furniture upholstered in this cocoa brown:

She has soft furnishings in this shade of blue:

While this combination has been popular for several years, our householder also has a lot of electronics in black and chrome, plus dark wood and black and white appliances. She wants another colour to liven up the combination.

We went to ColourSchemer and checked out their suggestions:

 

Their ideas include green and purple shades that will freshen up the look.

We also tried Color Scheme Designer. They offered a bright complementary colour scheme with orange, very popular this fall.

Adobe's Kuler recommended a surprising mix of greyed brights.

Play around with colours online to get ideas without muss or fuss. Once you've narrowed it down, choose a few colours to audition on your walls. See how they look in your space in daylight and at night before you make up your mind.

Paint Colours: It's Not All About the Paint

Paint colour is one of the most difficult and most important decisions you'll make in decorating. Often, we try to make this decision from colour cards, holding a variety of hues up to one another and choosing a great combination. We may go with a palette designed by a paint company, another option that can introduce us to combinations we wouldn't have though of ourselves.

As the room above shows, paint isn't the only source of colour in our rooms. This pretty room has neutral furnishings, so you might think you could choose any colour at all for the paints.

In fact, the golden shades of the carpet, curtains, and upholstery along with the black furniture and picture frames affect or even dictate your choices.

You can change your soft furnishings, of course, if you fall in love with a particular shade of paint. Think about the materials that aren't as easily changed: metals, stones, grasses, woods, and other natural materials have colours of their own.

Determine whether your natural materials have warm or cool tones and take that into account when making your decision.