Just yesterday, I was meeting with a client and the subject of the color grey came up. We were looking at stone and what mortar color we should use with various colors of stone. You might automatically think of mortar as being grey. But there are many shades of mortar and many shades of grey. Some of them can clash and result in a mismatched look.

Greys, and actually all colors, are grouped into two types, cool and warm. Cool greys have underlying blue tints. Warm greys have underlying tan or yellow tints. It’s easy to remember the terms if you think of ice being cold and blue while wood is brown and warm. (more…)

    It’s almost impossible to discuss composition and architectural proportion without referring to the golden mean, also called the golden section. Readers of Dan Brown’s mega-bestseller The Da Vinci Code may recall the description of that formula in the book. As a brief refresher, the golden mean is the original organizing and proportioning method or formula for art and architecture. Its theory tells us that human beings are most pleased when things are in a proportion of 1 to 1.618. In other words, if a window is one unit wide, it should be 1.618 units tall in order to be the most appealing to human eyes. The golden mean was used prominently in Greek and Roman architecture and is just as useful in today’s world. Indeed, the same ratio that was applied to the design of the Parthenon is likely to aid your architect in the design of your new home. (more…)

    In homebuilding, picking out the right materials can be a little tricky.

    I talked yesterday about the value of painting out larger samples of your wall and trim paint selections to verify that the colors were right. The same principles applies to the other materials you plan to use. Don’t pick bricks from a photo or even from a brick sample card with several thin bricks on it. Without mortar, the bricks will look different than they will on your house. Stone is even tougher. I can’t imagine being confident in a stone selection from a handful of loose stones. Stones come in a very wide range of colors, textures, and sizes. And there is no good way to describe stone in words. Photos of other walls help, but you need to be sure your builder can reproduce the wall you want. (more…)

    When designing your home, it is nearly impossible to make a reasonable judgment about colors of materials for your new house by simply looking at tiny color chips or samples. They will fool your eye every time.

    If you don’t believe me, try this little test. Go to the paint store, or your local Home Depot, and pick up a few color chips of paint. Be sure to get two of each color. When you get home, cut out the colors so that no white edges show. All you should have left is is small piece of paper with the color on it. Then place one of the chips on a white piece of paper and the other chip on some other color paper. Stand back and look at them. Do the colors look the same? I’ll bet they don’t. (more…)

    In a high-end community where I have designed nearly one hundred houses, there are fairly strict house design guidelines. Covenants and restrictions are a necessary element in maintaining a level of quality, and thus, maintaining property values. No one is happy if a lime green house ends up next door. Design restrictions offer some limits, and as Martha Stewart says, that is a good thing.

    But some restrictions can go too far. One rule this community has is that every house must have a clearly displayed house number. (more…)

    By now, we are all familiar with the term, McMansion. Last year, work took me to Sedona, Arizona. While there, my clients escorted my wife and I on a tour of the local sights. Sedona is wonderfully beautiful. It is home of some of the most spectacular rock formations in the world. Many movies have been shot there and the existentialists gather frequently to experience the vortexes. I have to admit to a large amount of skepticism on those vortexes. Or is it vortecii? It’s been long time since high school Latin. (more…)

    Here is the answer to yesterday’s Dream House Fumble question. I asked if you saw what was wrong with the brickwork. Here’s the photo, again, just to refresh your memory.

Dream House Fumble #3

    Does the brick look “glued on” to you? It does to me. (more…)

    In today’s quiz on house design bloopers, I offer up this photo.

     My question to you, dear reader, is do you see what’s wrong with this brickwork?

     I’ll tell you what struck my eye in tomorrow’s post.

Bill Hirsch

www.designingyourperfecthouse.com

www.williamhirsch.com

    You already know that fluorescent lights save energy. You know that they burn cool and don’t add heat to the room. This reduces the air conditioning load in your house and also reduces the risk of fire when used in tight spaces like closets. But you hate the cold, blue light they give off. You don’t like the sickly color your skin has when seen under fluorescent lights. Your clothes don’t look right. Do the greys look like the tans? You’ve tried the “warm white” fluorescents and they make everything look too pink.

    You’re in luck. There is now a solution. (more…)