The Color of Progress

Suddenly it is a riot of Spring outside. Well, maybe not a riot. But green grass is quickly growing, early flowers are making their appearance, and the leaves on shrubs and trees are just starting to unfurl. The landscape is slowly turning from brown to green, the colors made more vivid by an overnight snow and a bluebird sky. As an artist and designer I am aware of how associative color can be and how they can evoke different emotional responses. Some colors such as blue and green are calming and have an affinity with nature. The color red is thought to increase appetite (hence the many red dining rooms of the 2000s). Orange and yellow are active colors and are associated with youth and energy. The artist Kandinsky said, “Orange is like a man, convinced of his own powers.” As we get to the point of renovation where we are incorporating color into the finishes of the interior spaces, it’s important to think about how people might respond to them and how they work together. I mentioned in a previous blog that the walls will be white, the beams will be a charcoal black and the concrete will be tinted a warm terracotta color. I’m hoping to achieve a balance between the energy of high contrast black and white and the comforting colors of terracotta, accented with blues. In the apartment upstairs, the blue accents are turquoise but downstairs they will be shades of indigo which is thought to promote inner contemplation and self-reflection.

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Week 15
As color has visual temperature, then the color of the barn progress is definitely warming up to a nice yellow/orange. Greenish gray colored insulation foam has been blown in all the exterior walls and ceilings. Doors and windows which had been delayed until mid-June are surprisingly going to arrive soon. Drywalling will start soon and then the lovely terracotta stain on the concrete floors will be applied. I’ve been told to choose the colors for kitchen cabinets (a blue on the lowers and white on the uppers), so somewhere the cabinetry is being built. Color us excited!