Colour Me Tolerable

[undyingking]

I have no sense at all for colours that go together (as a few of you have kindly reminded me in the past...), so I'm hoping some of the less taste-challenged among you may be able to help me with a colour choice.

We're been redecorating our library room, a small squarish attic room with a dormer window facing NNW. The walls are Pugin Red, the glosswork and ceiling are white. The curtain material is a red, gold and beige vertical stripe thing. The idea was to achieve a costy womb-like atmosphere -- of course, the walls will mostly be covered with books so they're of all sorts of colours.

My question is, what sort of carpet should I go for? My immediate thought of a supporting colour(s) which will help brighten up the room a bit was gold -- but that sounds a bit nightmarish for a carpet. T suggested oatmeal, which I guess is the universal-recipient of carpet colours, but I'd like something more interesting than that if poss.

Any thoughts?

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

The idea was to achieve a costy womb-like atmosphere

I can point you to quite a number of home furnishing retailers you specialise in costy merchandise !

As far as colours go it depends on how adventurous you're trying to be. If you simply want to avoid a disaster, a mid charcoal grey is probably the way to go.

The oatmeal colour various people have suggested is similarly quite a safe choice (although I'd tend more towards the orange part of the spectrum - likely to be called something like 'biscuit').

However, it's possible you could get away with a much more striking effect if you were prepared to risk potential awfulness. Are your bookcases light or dark wood ? If the former, some kind of rich maroon colour might work for the carpet, aiming for a sort of "East India Company smoking room" effect. If the latter, possibly something like chocolate brown.

If you can get some digital photos of the room I'm happy to produce mockups in Photoshop.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I've used the Kuler app linked by zandev above to generate those last two. Type "bookcase" into the search box.

The colours are as follows:

Swatch 1: Pugin Red (roughly)
Swatch 2: Potential carpet
Swatch 3: Guesstimated colour of bookcases
Swatch 4: Guesstimated colour of gold bits in curtains
Swatch 5: Guesstimated colour of red bits in curtains

Didn't bother adding the white, 'cos it's unlikely to clash.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Aha, excellent!

I've tweaked it to reflect the actual colours of the walls and curtains, and my preferred bookcase colour -- see 'Bookcases by Mo'. To my untutored eye, your potential carpet still fits in pretty well...

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Yup, that works for me too.

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

Yep, purely from the description, I'd have said a rich chocolate brown too (if anything, red-hued rather than grey/green/ochre-hued through - most browns do seem to fall into one of these IME)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

bateleur's colour on the Kuler mockup is a sort of maroonish brown... see what you think, if you can access that from where you are atm...

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

The bookcase colour is up for grabs atm -- they're being made in pine, but they can be waxed to a range of colours. My tendency is towards a light (naturalish) colour.

The other thing I should have mentioned is that this is also the overflow spare bedroom, and it includes a futon / sofa of a mid-purple/chocolatey colour.

Biscuit colour sounds good (mm, biscuits!), are you talking about this sort of colour (although that one isn't mealy)?

No digial camera here alas, thanks for the offer though!

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Yes, roughly that sort of colour.

[secretrebel.livejournal.com]

I'd endorse the biscuit choice.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

And it won't show the crumbs -- very practical.