When it comes to bathroom paint colors, people mostly want them light and bright so they can "see." Some even go as far as making sure the paint color compliments a person's skin tone.
That's not what your bathroom sink vanity is meant to be, a place where you play with color.
Vanities originally started as make-up treasure chests that grew larger and larger over time. A beautiful stand-alone piece of furniture, a beauty station. Today a vanity is referred to as a base for a bathroom sink, where you brush your teeth and wash your hands. Unless they are flooded by natural light, bathrooms cast shadows on your face that shouldn't be there.
One of my clients was married to a color-blind man — not the type that women often tease about because they think men don't care about color or what they wear. Her husband's color blindness was real, and she loved showering him with colors he could see. Their home was filled with many black-and-white patterns and colorful, bold prints. She had kept her walls a light creamy yellow, a practical color that was anemic yet buzzed with tension like a bug light. When we changed them to a light moss green, her husband called to tell me that even though he was color-blind, he could feel a difference in their home. When I asked how, he said, it seemed that the walls had somehow simply relaxed.
Color is how we move our way through the world.
Particular colors convey a lot of day-to-day information. Red stop signs, blue light specials, yellow ribbons, and white flags. The red on the stop sign is there to make you stop. While looking at that stop sign, take a moment to notice how the streets look blue when wet or how there is a gorgeous green tree next to the red. It will make your journey so much more pleasant.
The same goes for the inside of your home. We choose dark bedding because the dog lies on the bed, white appliances because they go with the trim color, and black lamps because they are neutrals. We assign specific colors the job of being strictly functional.
Then there are the red chairs because you love red, the blue and yellow dishes. After all, you love yellow and blue or the sage green curtains in velvet because you don't even know why. It's all love when we choose a color for beauty's sake.
If you plan all the colors to be right with each other, you will have beauty and function all at once. In my business, wall colors have the awesome job of making all the colors in the room look functionally beautiful.
Color has a job, as long as it is about making things meaningful and lovely. We might as well smell the roses with our eyes.
Clear eyes, full heart, can't lose!
Yours,
G