Country Decor Blog

If you’re a chocolate lover, you’d approve of this message! Okay, so I’m not talking about edible chocolate - rather - I’m referring about using that gorgeous, rich colour on your walls at home. There is a certain sophistication to painting your walls dark brown, and that is because one must have a confidence in their decorating abilities in order to use dark colours on their walls. Why? Using dark colours on walls can create drama, intimacy, and coziness. But it can also plunge a room into dark despair! There are a certain number of rules to use when decorating with dark wall colours (in this instance chocolate brown). Follow these rules, and you’ll have a gorgeous room!

1. Is your room bright or dark? I always tell people that you can get away with painting every room chocolate brown if you have tons of natural light. Otherwise, the room will be plunged into gloominess. If you don’t have lots of natural light, but still want to use chocolate brown, maybe try just colour-blocking out one wall with the rich tone, allowing the space to breathe without being overwhelmed by colour.

2. How high is your ceiling? If you have a high ceiling, by painting it a lighter colour than the chocolate brown (one trick is to add a couple of drops of chocolate paint into your ceiling white to create a consistency in your colour tones), you will still make the room feel airy and open. 

So why chocolate brown? In the same way that we like the look and smell of chocolate, the richness of chocolate brown walls is known to have a calming effect. It’s like being enveloped in a mug of hot chocolate! Just like this room in Hampton Island, Georgia, keep your accessories neutral and allow the wall colour to take centre stage.

Some of my favourite chocolate brown paint colours are: 

Pratt & Lambert’s Stonehenge 2260 - a nice, chalky chocolate brown with a bit of grey in it

Benjamin Moore’s Brown Sugar 2112-20 - a rich warm dark brown

Para Paint’s Truffle Oil P5242-85 - a yummy chocolate brown with a hint of earthy green

There’s nothing more amusing than walking into a powder room that’s decorated in quirky style. Case in point: a friend’s powder room that was wallpapered in vintage covers from The New Yorker, a loo at a stable in Creemore, Ontario that was wallpapered in the back page from the UK’s Horse & Hound magazine (the back page consists of outrageous falls and near-falls from horseback throughout history). The powder room also gives a homeowner an opportunity to pull out all the stops and decorate in a way that they may not in a larger setting. For example, if you love hot pink, it would make more sense to paint a tiny powder room in that brilliant hue (try it in high gloss) than to paint your living room walls that colour! On my Hampton Island visit in Georgia last month, I was delighted to come across a powder room that was having fun with trompe l’oeil. Wallpapered in a stunning fabric printed with reams of porcelain plates “hung” on the wall, the effect was quite intense. The fabric was a rich amber and the plates were black and white chinoiserie. The overall look was quite fun. As intrigued as I was by the initial appeal of the room, imagine my surprise when I realized that they’d actually attached REAL plates to the wall - on top of the fabric pattern! What a fun idea.

At any rate, a great idea for a powder room that I would definitely suggest stealing from the stylish team at Hampton Island!

Imagine my surprise when I came into the Home & Country offices today (also our offices for Canadian Gardening magazine where I am also the Editor) to find that the only person to dress in green today in honour of St. Patrick’s day was Karina Leimanis, our assistant editor. I’m sure you’ll recognize that the name Karina is not particularly celtic (she’s Latvian in fact) but her green eyes and terrific green dot Banana Republic fact made her an honourary Irishwoman for the day. After a fantastic media cocktail party hosted by Tourism Ireland at the Four Seasons, Toronto (note my GREEN tote bag full of press kits), I am heading off to the opening night for Canada Blooms, where all things green will be present. After a dark winter, nothing will be more appealing than the scent of fresh flowers. Incidentally, the Gala is sponsored by Tourism Ireland as well, so I’m looking forward to a rollicking evening of music (and hopefully green beer!)  As a side note, for all of you naysayers out there who don’t believe one should dress up for St. Patrick’s Day, I say “get some Irish into your life.”

So here I am, wearing green with Karina outside my office!

Ever since I was a child, dressing up in green on St. Patrick’s day was one of my favourite activities. My late mother would even dye our glass of milk green, and cut our sandwiches into a shamrock shape. Maybe it’s my love for my late paternal grandfather, who was born outside of Belfast. Something about wearing green makes me feel more connected to him (although ironically it was his least favourite colour), or maybe it’s just because I love green in March! If green is inspiring you as well, you can enter a contest to join me in Ireland this July. Click on this link to enter: www.canadiangardening.com/ireland.php

It always seems that creating a colour palette is one of the most daunting decisions when decorating. There are lots of ideas out there on how to create a look for your home that you love, but the idea that always works for me is to focus on things that I love and use them for inspiration. In the case of the update of my living room decor, I started to look at what I loved in the room and what I was tired of. LOVE: my antique black satin glass, my floating dark walnut shelves, my high-backed settee. TIRED OF: the warm colours of the walls, the warm wheat fabric of the settee, the gloomy feeling of too much dark colour in the small space. So off I went to Robert Allen fabrics, where I started to go through their fabulous fabrics. I was looking for the “one statement” fabric that would work. I didn’t want a complete overhaul of my room - just an update. I found a fabulous fabric, Beacon Hill Luxury Velvet in Moss, that was just right. Still a neutral colour, but more greige then beige. I worked it in with a Beacon Hill class oatmeal linen fabric that I have always loved: Linen Weave in Linen and then found a great pattern in Beacon Hill’s new upholstery fabric: Bouncing Ball in Pewter. The tones are all soft and would be considered a warm grey. But not too warm! It’s interesting, because often people will start with a paint colour and then find fabrics that work with them. I always do it in reverse. I want the fabrics and textures in a room to be the focal point, the paint should just work as a backdrop. The accent colour that I used is a bold French blue linen. I love it! I have my stack of fabrics sitting on my desk while the pieces have gone out for reupholstery. I can’t wait to update you with photos of the pieces when they’re ready!

Phew! What a long weekend at the Interior Design show… But what a lot of fun (and inspiration) as well! The show was packed with visitors all weekend long, and I showed up early Saturday morning to photograph our space with phenom photographer Donna Griffith. We arrived at 6 a.m. to an echoing space devoid of visitors. the Interior Design Show usually has packed aisleways so it was a great opportunity to check everything out while no one was there. However, Donna quickly got down to work, unpacking her two cartloads of photography equipment. Though there were tons of great booths at the show (retailer Hollace Cluny’s elegant but diminutive booth being one of my favourite) (p.s. the elegant wooden folding screen featured in our booth is available through Hollace Cluny), the one thing that absolutely differentiated

Our fab booth from the outside!

the Style at Home/Canadian Home and Country/Canadian Gardening booth was our use of vivid colour from Beautitone paints. Our selected colours were chosen to match the equally awesome photographic wallpaper from the innovative Montreal company Wallyouneedislove. The intense aqua used in Style at Home magazine’s area was Beautitone 3Q3-6 while the shamrock green colour that was used in the Canadian Home & Country/Canadian Gardening area was (the perfect kelly green - very Audrey Hepburn!) was Beautitone 3L3-8. We are very thankful to awesome stylist Malcolm Patterson who decorated our innovative space. In the darkness of February, it is great to work with someone who appreciates the beauty of colour! I don’t want to get into too much more detail about this space - Donna Griffith’s beautiful photos will be seen in an upcoming issue of Canadian Home & Country magazine!