Anyone familiar with my Color mantra knows that Red goes with everything! My preference aside, Color is the power ingredient for your Interior space, and should reflect the colors you relate to most enthusiastically – on all levels: practical, emotional — and sentimental!
Interpreting your Color preferences into your Interior design project requirements should be creative, relevant and fun! The adventure of your Interior design project potential presents multiple opportunities to indulge your Color choices at all levels from flooring to walls to accessories. Coordinating carefully for harmony, compatibility and exciting, unexpected departures from old habits is one place in your plan where your Interior design professional may surprise you with innovative Color treatment ideas and recommendations!
Most folks (when they think about it) have predetermined, often hard-set, conclusions about which Color combinations are right and which just are not!
Well, fasten your seat belt! Many of those old convictions of the past Color Czars have been abandoned in favor of bold adventures into the new and the exciting! Once upon a time, for instance, blue with black and other mental sets were verboten! At some point, several decades ago, Interior design became emboldened, broke ranks and broke through and past those limited conventions concerning Color and its use.
In past articles in this series about Interior design issues and challenges, I have discussed the power of Color and its creative potential in modern materials – fabrics, plastics, tiles, paints and an entire body of new elements that stretch the limits we once self-imposed. Gladly, today there really are NO perceived limits to our use of color, its combinations and its applications – and your preferences.
What else has changed concerning Color’s bold strides in commercial, municipal, corporate and institutional facilities since we last discussed Color? Lots! Well, for one thing, the commercial community has finally caught up with the bold strides in Color application within the pioneering residential sector!
Interior design, as with many other venues, has significantly embraced the necessary disciplines of renewable resourcing, environmentally friendly materials and their enhancement applications. Could there be a more exciting and creatively challenging paradigm than bold new uses and combinations of Color paired with a commitment to sustainable, renewable materials?
Brave and creative strides in the use of Color have changed the impacts of your external marketing plan and your Interior space’s fulfillment of advertising and promotional promises. Bold Color imprints the minds of your market share when repetition, appropriate placement, excellent graphics and coordinated Color use becomes your norm. Your professional Interior design team should work in concert with your graphics, printing and signage resources; and, that silent veto potential that we all know is waiting in the wings!
Encountering a drab, monochromatic Interior just shouts out: Time for a change! Sometimes it just takes a fresh pair of eyes to help one realize that one’s competitors have outpaced your Interior presentation. Being stuck – in old preferences, habits and comfort zones – may not be a crime, but it could be a factor really impacting your bottom line. Not knowing the competition and not noticing what constitutes their edge can significantly affect gaining your market share!
Color alone cannot do all the magic! But, more often than not (and especially when there are serious budget constraints) creative use of today’s Color opportunities can transform a needy Interior, simply and economically. Color is a natural transformer of light, space volume, emotions and attitudes!
Your Interior design team knows how to balance out disadvantages of all kinds that limit the potential of your commercial Interior space. One of the secret weapons is Color! Just ask! Help is on the way!
Robert Boccabella, B.F.A. is principal and founder of Business Design Services and a certified interior designer in private practice for over 30 years. Boccabella provides Designing to Fit the Vision© in collaboration with writingservice@earthlink.net. To contact him call 707-263-7073; email him at rb@BusinessDesignServices.com or visit www.BusinessDesignServices.com or on Face Book at Business Design Services.
