No Fuchsia Chair For Me.
I don’t wear bright colors. Well almost never, and if you see me in a bright color it’s probably fuchsia. I found out a long time ago that limiting my wardrobe colors makes dressing, shopping and coordinating a lot easier. I also feel calmer in monochromatic, low-contrast colors.
My living room is sort of the same way; its fairly monochromatic except for the stuff. I live in my living room; there are guitars and books and a chain maille making station, the TV, the book-cases — and, of course, the general day-to-day detritus. The fact that the furniture is low-contrast helps keep the room somewhat calm.
I’m getting to the point.
The other gray rainy day I thought, “I’m going to do new slipcovers for the living room, and I’m going to make them fuchsia.” I went online to my favorite fabric supplier and by golly he had the perfect fuchsia twill. I was just about to hit the buy button when I remembered that perhaps I should take a lesson from my own book and test this color out first.
So I went to the fabric stash and pulled out a large piece of fuchsia linen and draped it over one wing chair. A fuchsia chair! The color was lovely, it mirrored the pink in Granny’s needlepoint displayed beside it and I was enthralled. But, again, taking a page from my own lesson book, I left it alone for the day.
Next morning I walked into the living room and was startled at the big expanse of hot pink. It did all the things I rail against; it was high-contrast and had become the focal point of the corner. It took over all the visual space in the room and just hollered, ”Look at me, look at me!’
And I thought, holy moly, what if I did the sofa and the other chair in this color. The room would be so busy it would drive me nuts.
My protege Tracy said I should maybe just do a few pillows and a throw for the sofa; maybe a new area rug. The teacher is chagrined.
There are quite a few free websites that allow you to upload a picture of your room and paint the walls or a chair so you can see what the outcome will be before you plunge. That’s for people who don’t have 5-meter cuts of fabric in their stash
http://planner.roomsketcher.com/ — This one does 3D.
http://www.dulux.ca/DIY/colour/colour-visualizer You have to create an account with this one but it also has a ” pick a color from a picture and we’ll show you the paint color” feature.
For paint colors:
http://easyrgb.com/index.php?X=SEEK : this one will tell you what 4 paint companies have colors similar to the one you are choosing. You have to know the RGB values of your color, but you can get that from:
