Linda Applewhite loves color.
Warm colors, cool colors, bold colors, soft colors. They speak
to her and she responds. Color informs her sensibilities, her art, her
design, her life. So when a client recently broke the news that her
vision for her bedroom included a white bed, Linda was at a loss for
words - and that doesn’t happen often. “I tried to talk her out of it,”
Linda says now, laughing. “I’m the one who is always teaching people not
to be afraid of color, but the truth is, I was afraid of white.”
Why
the fear? While white may be perceived as the absence of
color, as Chesterton's quote suggests, scientifically it
is really the presence of all color, and therefore
reflects all color, making it the "shining and affirmative thing"
he reveres. White goes with everything. But we’ve all seen white
rooms, even tone-on-tone rooms that are, shall we say, less than
interesting.
So
Linda’s old pal the color wheel couldn’t help her on this one. No
analogous apricots waiting nearby to create harmony with their golden
sisters, no chartreuse to reach across and make its complementary violet
pop. There’s no white on the color wheel, so there are no analagous
harmonies or complementary partners to be found... or so she thought.
But
wanting to honor her client’s vision for her bedroom, Linda turned to
her other design principles for inspiration. She and her client had
already chosen a beautiful Turkish Oushak rug, and Linda had intended to
use the red and blue in the rug as the palette for the duvet cover,
pillows and window treatments. Switching gears, she instead looked for
white fabrics that had patterns and textures that related to those in
the rug and other elements in the room, with just a touch of color in
the blue dotted window treatments and red and blue bed pillows for
contrast. Her client was thrilled with the result and, much to her
surprise, so was Linda.
“I
really wasn’t sure it would work. To use white so broadly when it
doesn’t appear in the rug - the foundation of the room - was
risky,” explained Linda. “But white goes with any color. It’s serene,
yet it pops and is bold, and can still have interest and whimsy by using
vibrant patterns and textures and mixing it with other colors. I guess
it’s true what Richard Bach said. We teach best what we most need to
learn, and I really learned to love and appreciate white. It is
not a lack of color, but in fact an abundance of color."
The moral of the story is: Celebrate your freedom of
choice.
Explore your vision and never, ever fear color!
