I feel your pain as we have the same situation with our kitchen. We used BM Hepplewhite Ivory and really like it. I've tried to add some drama to the back of our home (northern exposure, 8 ft ceilings, tons of trees in back) and each time I've regretted it. Hepplewhite Ivory is soothng and bright at the same time and looks good at all times of the day. We have a lot of artwork and it seems to work well with whatever we have displayed on it. At first I thought it would be way too boring but I was pleasantly surprised. Good Luck

Sorry, trying to post photos with my new macbook and no psuccess yet, will keep trying....

Hey Fly, I am zooming out the door for the day. Quick thought...have you thought of a Filtered Light with more oomph? C2 Polenta comes to mind. It is wildly yellow, but I'm just trying to think outside the box...

I really want to play around with orange and apricot in the next house....probably in my NW Exp studio. It's scary to contemplate but it could be a happy color!! Your DH's wellbeing can be greatly influenced by your choice. Maybe theraputic should trump aesthetic.

Gotta go...more later...

With your DH's SAD and the dark colors you have in cabinets, etc., my suggestion would be an off-white such as jjam mentioned.

In our darkest rooms, you know what colors play best? Dark ones! Deep, intense, rich colors that are much, much darker than you'd think would be acceptable in the paint store. Darkest tone on the color card, definitely. Then lots of flexible lighting (very important!) and some bright accents.

Since you're dealing with SAD, I'm thinking something in the greater orange family -- What about starting with the color of a clasp envelope? Not manilla folder, but somewhere in between really tough old corn and the inside of an acorn squash? An intense, fall harvest gold. If that's not right, venture out through harvest oranges and coppers to rusty or bricky reds.

Avoid 'creamy or white' undertones as anything even remotely 'pastel-ish' won't play well in the dark. Think clear, translucent colors -- colors you'd find in fall foliage.

BM Pittsfield Buff HC-24

I have this is my north facing sewing room and have to say it's one of my favorite colours.

I was going to say orange, too! I like the "acorn squash" color sweeby suggested. Maybe a light papaya would work?

Sorry, we have no painted walls in our home, so I can't suggest an actual paint color.

Fly, we have a similar situation as yours plus a wrap around front porch that makes our LR even darker. About 3 weeks ago we painted the LR with SW Blonde and I love, love, love it. What a change! Everytime I walk in now it makes me happy. It's such a warm, cozy color without the darkness.

Hey fly!

I have Blonde like mammie and love it but when I was testing about a thousand (more or less) quarts, I really fell in love with SW white raisin. It's not white but a golden yellow that's not too bright but oh, so cheerful.

I have winter mood issues like your DH and every time I'd walk into the room where it was painted, I'd just smile. Our area was just too big to take a chance on it with 20' ceilings so I chickened out and went with SW Ivoire for the front of the house.

Good morning you all - thanks so much for your suggestions.

Hepplewhite Ivory is a pretty color--thanks, jjam. I'll take it into consideration, although at this point I'm trying to find a color that really has a presence, and H.I. seems like a harmonizer, if that makes sense? But maybe I'll realize that's what I need...

Amy, you did orange in your FL kitchen, iirc, on one wall or something? Or in cabinets? I have an orange memory connected with you...?

I've looked at some of what you're talking about (deeper "filtered light"), and then thought 1) it doesn't go with the colors in the kitchen unless I go with a deep gold and 2) I'm afraid it will look "transitional", not so modern...maybe put something like that on one wall? Could that work? I don't have access to C2 paint, though...any EKs you see that you'd recommend? I find myself using either BM or EK most often...

sweeby, your comments also really help. Oddly enough, I'm painting *over* a bricky red, a wall that the PO has in a Devine color we call "dried blood" (don't think that's really the name :)). But you echo the deep harvest color and maybe I'll do that on one wall at least--I'm thinking of an inset section of a wall that isn't visible from the other rooms, but is definitely visible from the sofa in the tv area.

I also am thinking (after I posted last night) that I'm being hampered a bit by the reddish-tan (think dead skin, although I believe it's formally called Devine Filbert) color in the front of the house -- and it's *all* over, two stories+ high, in the front and I just don't have the stamina to paint it right now.

With the way that the southern light blues out that color it really just looks like a band-aid, which makes me crazy. You can't see it from the back of the house, but it sure sets the tone in the front. Someday I'll paint that too, but I feel (maybe masochistically?) that I should take the present color into account when choosing for the back? Or should I not and maybe even include a new color for that area in my color palette choice?

dawn, thanks for the Pittsfield Buff rec. It seems yellowish, but I'll give it a try in our space.

I'll look at deep apricots today, although when I think of our kitchen (blue/gray, sage, Hallarum, and gold) it just seems wrong...but maybe I should paint up a sample or two (on test paper) and see.

----------------------------
Oy, I just hit "refresh" and I have more suggestions! A uxorial vote for orange -- maybe I'll consider it in that inset area. I could see that happening.

parma, thanks for your thoughts/experiences. I'll look at the SW store today for white raisin and Blonde, too (thanks, mammie!). Are they offwhite-ish? Wheh you say that when you'd walk into the room where "it" was painted, did you mean Blonde or White Raisin?

Thanks again everyone.

Fly, I meant the White Raisin. It is yellowish, though, so if that's not where you want to go...

SW has it in one of the pamphlets there, It's kinda hard to find on their paint strips. If you're interested just ask one of the people behind the counter to show you where it is.

Fly! I should be writing a lecture on detente and 1968 (and if you want to help, just jump right in) but a thought: how about a subtle metallic/candlelight, maybe a very pale grey tending to silver at night in lamplight? Lots of light for DH, a bit more "presence" while still being modern enough to work w/your furn and other colors... ??

I believe Dunn-Edwards has metallics (not '70s/disco-ball-y), and so does Ralph Lauren.

Will keep my fingers crossed that you find what you need!

BM Bone White has worked out wonderful in my dark northern hallway. It looks rich with my dark wood tones and can go modern or traditional. I have seen it used in House Beautiful this year for the walls and the trim and was impressed. Good luck with your search.
kay123

Hey again Fly.

I used EK Mustard Seed in my kitchen (very contemporary, remember?) and I really loved it. It was an accent wall, everything else being Classic Cream, with pale blue and cherry cabs, bamboo floors and red accents.

I know you want to do all the walls one color, but is there any feasible way to do an accent wall or two? Have color and fight the SAD?

I also used C2 Radiate, combined with blue (C2 Ersatz...dontcha love the names?) in my laundry room. Radiate is closest to SW Papaya or BM Amber Waves 2159-40.

That was Florida light though. The house was very shady, but the light was bright and clear, when we got it.

I am contemplating BM Glowing Apricot for my studio. And probably F&B Orangery for my laundry room, mud room and/or powder room.

As for keeping it modern, I think sweeby's advice to stay with clear colors is on the mark. When we "knock back" colors, they do take on a more historical/traditional feeling. We already chatted about clear vs. toned colors on the Emerald thread WRT light. Since we know you can have clear color in that area, with the exposure you have, it is safe to say that a clear color will be a viable way to maintain the contemporary look.

You know this will be a case of dominoes....paint one room and suddenly the adjacent room becomes "wrong". I think you need to get the biggest/most-used space right and go from there. DO NOT make any decisions based on the color out front!! I had a LR/DR combo done up in two shades of Bandaid, way back when. Just pretend it's not there.

As for the kitchen, are those your colors? Are you still liking them? If so, then work with them. But not the Filbert. I gotta say....well, I guess I don't gotta....but I will...I never did understand those Devine colors. Some are nice, but many are a mystery to me. Maybe one has to live in the PNW to get 'em.

Hi amy,

Oh, you so get what's going on...the bandaid look...

And *that* was it, the EK Mustard Seed. Lovely :)

That's interesting about the clear colors. I'll go back and read the Emerald thread again, and sit with my obsolete miller color box to see the clear tones vs. the muted tones. (break -- I actually couldn't wait to sit down and go through them so I just went right over and did it before finishing my post!) And I need to say that I sure do gravitate toward the muted ones or even the shaded ones. Clear colors are *so* NOT me. But I'll give it a try.

The Devine colors? I really like the texture but the colors, esp. the first generation which is what I have, were MURKY (I think because of the excessive amount of titanium dioxide she asked for to get them to cover so well). Her newer colors are clearer, but still that does no good for me with my first-generation Filbert.

Thanks for telling me I don't have to make nice to the front of the house :)

OH, and yes, I do still like the kitchen colors. Very very much. One thing is that I keep edging away from a green, even though I feel a primal pull right back to it...I can't decide if I want a warm green or a cool green (I guess I would have to go with warm)...

Fly, I think you know that before I was completely reborn again and baptized, I had modern (mine really was 50s and my best friend's mother was a graduate student in the day who worked with Frank L Wright and their house was very similar to Falling Waters West.

I copied colors from her. My house was 1150 sq feet (that was in the 1960s but their house was built in the 1940s but much of it remained the same until the daughters and I (my best friends) were adults. Their house, was (I am sure 10x the size of my humble first marriage home). Their library was as big as my house.

They had very few walls save glass and and heavy drapes that covered what seemed like inch-thick glass only stopped by 8 x 8s that reinforced floor to ceiling in walnut. In early morning hours, they were closed when everyone was getting dressed, crying, or screaming or refusing to eat eggs or ride the bus to school.

All four sides of their house was glassed but I still remember some of the colors she used to this day. She had a tan that had what I would call flesh undertones. She had orange in the kitchen with those aqua appliances.

In my house, I used orange, a very pale aqua and what I would think is a nursery yellow and that really strong green which was almost like velvet Christmas ribbon in the accent colors. I had more wall exposed and they had more glass and drapes exposed.

But like I said, they had walls only in the areas where it was necessary, like partitioned rooms, bedroom ends and bathrooms, kitchen (their appliances were aqua from the 1940s). The drapes were that dark velvet browned-down green and appeared to be miles of drapes which opened up to the lake, the water falls, the pools, the tennis courts, the cantilevered veranda. Most everything was rock, stone, bricks, metal sculptures and wooded areas that served as a backdrop for the whole scene.

Their floors were hardwood, with beautiful carpets with European rugs atop the carpets which did not go all the way to the walls and the hardwood floors showed there and were warmed by the windows when the miles of drapes were open.

Gosh, I had a walk down memory lane at your expense, but I wanted to say the colors were orange (not brassy orange) and peach/flesh/tan, soft aqua (almost a pastel white with blue/green undertones) and the most sufficient dark-brown-green velvet drapes. In a more traditional house, those drapes would have had fringe, I bet, but in this house they were just pleated drapes and they had huge traverse thingies that the housekeepers used to open them once everyone was dressed and up and about.

I have to remind myself and others that their huge DR table was a lazy susan that she designed and had a local contractor build and it took him months, as I recall my grandfather laughing about it with the carpenter who seemed to have a hard time getting it done just right.

It was fun having the richest people you ever knew ask to buy 60 acres from your family onto which they would build the most distinguished house *even to this day* that little county ever had, and as far as I know the glass in the windows is still the original, drapes are replaced with beige (what appears silk and looks so much less). The owners are young professionals whose money tree is not as thick as the former owners, so the house will never be quite the same but my memories are so vivid, that nothing could replace it in my mind.

Wow Patricia....thanks for the mini vacation! Lovely trip back.

Fly, the muted colors you are attracted to will be yours. My thought (without really knowing your space) is that in your dim light, clear and bright will become more muted. If you started with muted, colors would become downright murky in a low-light situation.

When you look at the chips, are you sitting in the low light room? Or under bright lights at the kitchen counter or at your desk? (You know where you should be...!) ;-)

"Fly, the muted colors you are attracted to will be yours. My thought (without really knowing your space) is that in your dim light, clear and bright will become more muted. If you started with muted, colors would become downright murky in a low-light situation."

Well said! That was what I meant, but couldn't put into words.

Fly, I posted a long post yesterday, but it's not here...long story short, we inherited 2 years ago when we bought our current home, a very dark kitchen & I was used to a white, bright kitchen. Anyhow, we got rid of her Devine brownish/rust paint color, and put on a BM yellow...baaad. I have SO many trial jars of paint in our garage, but finally went with a RH color called Sea Green...it's a bluish green & it's working out well with our cherry cabs., wood floors, and stainless appliances.

We do have granite countertops...very dark, but it works with them, too. People who come to our home call the color "comforting". It's the darkest part of our home & I thought choosing the yellow would "brighten it up", but it was just not good in this particular space.

Good luck & post when you're done!

Flyleft
I have the same kind of room in my house. Low light, northern exposure and I live on the Gulf Coast! It's sunnier than crap here almost all of the time, but we wouldn't know that from this room and it's our main living area. After testing all kinds of colors I ended up going with a medium grey. Nothing else looked good in this weird light. It uses the White Base with only raw umber as the colorant.
I'm definitely affected by light conditions and it was a relief when I finally painted the room from the "light switch beige" it was before. I always steered clear of grey because I thought it was depressing, imagine my surprise! I used deep tones in my kitchen (peacock/marine blue) and dining (an almost black, blue). The Gamma Grey is a nice buffer. It's a very close match to SW 7065 (Argos).
Walkin's suggestion to add shimmer to the paint sounds fantastic.

Autumnal paint colors, whites, and beiges don't look good in my light conditions. I do have an orange couch and have a lot of those fall colors in my art and accessories.

Ay ay ay! My suggestion cup runneth over! parma, walkin, kay, amy, sweeby, lizzie & alex...*so* much to try out. Thanks for sharing your experiences/ideas...

You've given me much to look forward to; I'll reply to them as soon as I can honestly say I'm ready to sit down and think. I've officially entered pre-Halloween panic, as I'm in a bit of a only-a-decorating-obsessed-person-could-be-in-such-a-bind: having to clean up this very area in question for a kids' Halloween party but even with spiderwebs and shrunken heads applied liberally, there's no way to cover *all* the paint samples I've painted on the wall! thank goodness the folks coming are nice and will probably be into offering color suggestions while the kids play :)

Fly, do you have a lot of overcast weather too? Here in the wooded Northeast there is lots of gray weather much of the year as well as shadows from all the trees during sunnier times. Sweeby was right about using strong clear colors in these instances. I used to turn my nose up at the old Colonial color palette, but now that I live up here, I see how well those strong dark colors work in dim light, especially if you use a light color for stark contrast. I read a quote by Mark Hampton once that you can't make a dark room light by using light colors. He recommended embracing the dark with a strong color.

Flyleft,

Please post after you decide on your color--I'm having the same problem with no light in the living areas. I too like the muddy colors and don't want to use white but not sure what else to try.

Thanks for asking this question!

awm, interesting quote. I seemed to remember that too, but I'm just afraid of doing it because of the SAD factor. We put up a couple of colors from the "clear" section of the Miller deck and they really do look better in the low light of the evening, btw. To me they're not as "interesting", as in not as many overtones, but the other consideration may outweigh that one.

dktrahan, I sure will. I tried laying out some Heath tiles on the gas stove hearth we have in the corner of this room (I'm going to retile the platform the stove is on, as well as maybe the wall behind it), and I *love* the way they look -- they're all earthy kind of tones, even including the light blue -- I'm hoping they'll give me a tip as to which color to choose. We should have plenty of murky weather this weekend (chance of rain) so the gloomy light conditions will be in full force.

Fly, one other suggestion for a dark room: a little sparkle here & there. Think of using maybe a well-placed mirror, a glass coffee table or some glass table or floor lamps to catch the few rays and reflect them back. Maybe an investment in a great piece of art glass.

I was in a hotel recently that had very little natural light in a breakfast/lobby area, done in dark greens with dark brown woodwork. I was amazed how lively the room looked, and the trick was that shiny surfaces were mixed in with matte. The floor was particularly good: matte green squares with shiny green squares worked in a plaid pattern. Some wall surfaces had irridescent green grasscloth, others matte wallpaper. It was stunning (it was just a Days Inn, too -- that's stunning as well!)

Would you consider a full-spectrum line like Donald Kaufman? I have his lovely yellow in a northern room and it is beautiful in all lights, or no light. It's warm, gentle, but absolutely no wussyness about it.

I can't tell you the number (though I might recognize the number if someone else named it from the DK deck.) Instead of buying the expensive DK decks, if you're interested in this idea you could just get a sample pot of that color and paint it on a large board and then move it around and see how you like it. Since it's a true FS paint, I think I would try painting two boards so you could put them at right angles to each other at corners and see how it plays. I know I love my yellow room, it always lifts my spirits when I go in.

HTH,

Molly~

I have one of those rooms too, and with a wood ceiling to boot. I also wanted a darker color - but in the end, the samples I tried just became soooo dreary in my space. And my husband was worried that it would feel like a cave. We finally settled on Custard by Devine Paint. So far we are really enjoying it.

If you're still thinking about green, try some Farrow and Ball greens: Green Ground, Churlish, Tunsgate. I don't have a card with me--doing this from memory. Another interesting green was Citron Agave. EK Sea Glass is a sort of luminous gray in my northern room, but I think it's supposed to be green. Amy, when you do that Glowing Apricot, I want to see photos! I'm drawn to the color chip, but have never seen it in a room.