Tom Waits has this beautiful song, "You Can Never Hold Back Spring," and whether you take it literally about the winter having to end sometime or metaphorically about the good times coming back, it amounts to the same thing. Rejuvenation comes again. Color returns. They have to. In the Hudson Valley, March begins that slow process in stops and starts: the messy, glorious ache of the transition from winter to spring.
It's got us thinking about green. Kermit said it's not easy being green, and we hate to argue with a Muppet of such stature, but being green seems pretty great.
Green is the color of hope, of resilience, of relevance.
It's also, for some reason, a color associated with envy, and envy is exactly what we're feeling when we see many of the jaw-dropping spaces lately putting green into action.
When Grayscale Design posted the above bathroom with that amazing green Featherfest wallpaper by Schumacher and our Cornwall bath bar, it stopped us in our tracks. So fresh! If you step into that powder room to freshen up, you are definitely going to come out refreshed.
In the world of interior decor, green vitalizes a space. It energizes a room. It can be earthy. It can be calming. It can be rich, majestic, imperial, suggesting a world of wealth and class. It all depends upon the hue and how it's applied.
Emerald brings in another dimension, transports the room. Don't take our word for it. Check out this Pinterest board.
Pantone’s Color of the Year, Greenery, is an acknowledgment of green's connection with nature, and our psychological need to be more connected to nature. In their words, "Greenery is nature’s neutral. The more submerged people are in modern life, the greater their innate craving to immerse themselves in the physical beauty and inherent unity of the natural world. This shift is reflected by the proliferation of all things expressive of Greenery in daily lives through urban planning, architecture, lifestyle and design choices globally. A constant on the periphery, Greenery is now being pulled to the forefront—it is an omnipresent hue around the world." (For more Greenery, check out our Pinterest board devoted to the color here.)
We’re looking for colors that feel nutritive, partly as a result of feeling enervated by the demands (and notifications) of modern life. Not that Greenery has got to be the shade to answer this call. The greens used in this breathtaking space with our Bari feel rejuvenating. It appears to be an entryway. What an awesome idea. Come home depleted and immediately begin to recharge with all this green goodness.
In this room by Level 5 Designs, they focused on the “fifth wall”—the ceiling—giving the room an enormous lift. As Albert Hadley noted, ceilings are too often neglected.
Adding unity to the room, Level 5 Designs commissioned bespoke pieces of art by Rachel Stewart, whose dynamic abstract shapes guide the eye toward the green above.
Not that green can only enter a room's design scheme via paint or wallpaper. Furniture and accents are a wonderful place to bring a green that speaks to you into the space. The hunter green velvet sofa in front of the fire in this beautiful room by Nina Seed is so inviting.
Some love the crisp perfection of a glowing white space. Some love the drenching drama of a dark room. But for others, mixtures work best—a space with plenty of white or other neutral but with some other color that provides contrast and affects their emotional being in a desirable way.
Corey Damen Jenkins used this powerful green, seen below, to dynamize the space. He and the homeowners had originally tried to keep the first floor a continuous shade of off-white, but found it to be too drab. So they custom-mixed this emerald shade of green combining two existing shades.
The result is staggering. In this foyer, with our Marietta in the center, the excellent green they mixed provides a regal context for all the items in the room, as well as rich visual interest. Extending it from the entryway around the staircase going up to the second floor, the green creates a sense of continuity and flow.
What shades of green do you love? Any plans to bring more green into your space this year?
