In my house, the color palette is neutral: The walls are pale linen, the sofa is light brown, the rugs are natural sisal, the dishes are white.
I find neutrals calming, tasteful and restful. And the perfect backdrop for anything and everything, all seasons of the year, whether the shade is taupe, tan, ecru, almond, cream or ivory. Or lavender.
Once considered too cloying, too old-fashioned, perhaps best left for the baby’s room, lavender has of late become a go-to color for walls, ceilings, fabrics and furniture, showing up in magazines, catalogs, show houses and designers’ portfolios.
“It’s gone beyond the sweet old lady thing,” said Washington, D.C., designer Whitney Stewart. “It’s something new and fresh that we can use in the same way as the beiges.”
This season, Crate and Barrel is selling lavender stemware. Pottery Barn’s summer paint palette includes a shade of lavender. Restoration Hardware, known for its strictly edited color selection, sells lavender paint, shower curtains and towels. And, last fall on the fashion runway, where interior design often takes its cues, a pale lavender wedding gown appeared among a sea of white and ivory.
The color stars at the Kips Bay Decorator Show House in New York this month, where emerging design trends often begin their journey into the mainstream. A lush bedroom decorated by Manhattan designer Jamie Drake included lavender wall-to-wall carpeting, a lavender velvet slipper chair and high-gloss lavender lacquer wall panels.
Many people have a misconception about neutrals, designers say. Neutral does not have to mean shades of beige. It’s a grounding background color that does not call attention to itself, but allows everything around it to stand out.
New York’s Mario Buatta offers this paint recipe for the timid: three parts Lavender Ice, one part Polar White (both from Benjamin Moore). And to women whose men won’t consider lavender, this advice: “Most men aren’t aware of the color of the room they are in. Just don’t tell them it’s lavender.”
“There is an entire world out there of neutral colors that are not beige,” said Stephanie Hoppen, author of “Perfect Neutrals: Color You Can Live With.”
“The best shades are those that have been paled-down, dirtied, weathered,” Hoppen said. “This makes them sophisticated rather than sweet; stylish and never cloying – and far from dull.” Her choice for color companions: amethyst and other darker shades of lavender, creamy colors, all the brown shades, and lime green accents.
The wide spectrum of lavenders – tending toward pink, blue, gray or white – can adapt to almost any color or design style. Paired with warm dark wood finishes, lavender can seem cool and refined. Near a cool pale green, lavender comes across as warm and lively. “It can pick up the qualities of any color,” said Chicago designer Anne Coyle. “There’s no color that it can’t mix with. Lavender is the new neutral.
Coyle said lavender is always her first choice, and it’s the color of the walls in her home furnishings store in the Bucktown neighborhood of Chicago. Despite a rotating stock of items in a mix of colors and styles, she says, nothing ever looks bad with the lavender walls. “Go really pale or really deep,” Coyle said. “Avoid midrange because it tends to look childish.”
She likes the color with black and white, brown, gray, celadon (a pale green), mustard yellow, contemporary furniture and antiques. “It’s like gray but a little more racy, a little more fun,” she said. “It’s like the crazy aunt of gray.”
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