Dark Rooms

Muddy Victorian brown, eggplant and greens plus gray and black are colors to use for maximum drama.

I’m in the mood for dark. Yes, I know summer officially starts this weekend, everything’s about to go all beachy, and what’s logical is to be looking at whitewashed rooms with lavender or turquoise accents.

But those are everywhere and I’m not “feeling” them. I’m craving some interior drama – the kind delivered by muddy Victorian-era greens and browns, plus black and the dark gray used in the sophisticated living room [top]  which took its color scheme from the antique marble mantel.

Bittersweet-chocolate lacquered walls also compliment the mantel in this room by Mario Buatta. By picking up highlights in the marble, the Chintz-master was able to craft a yellow-orange-gold palette to play against the dark chocolate walls and tie into a variety of chintz patterns, a plaid and a knockout leopard-pattern footstool in front of the hearth. This pattern and color mix isn’t easy to pull off and while it spreads the focal point of the room around like cream cheese on a bagel, it works.

In my Plummy Dark Rooms post,  I showed rooms based on  the purple and fuchsia palette popular for some time in England. Here is an austere variation on that theme with walls the color of Farrow & Ball’s Brinjal, a highly eccentric eggplant-brown.

Walls with a metallic aura — these remind me of a variation on bronze patinas — have incredible sophistication and an ability to color shift a bit. Is this green, bronze or gray? Judging from the superb Art Deco carpet, I’d venture it’s gray with a green undertone.

Billiard table green shrinks a space to such a degree I feel it works best in huge spaces or tight ones like this narrow hallway.

This handsome modern bedroom does the black room thing well — particularly with the white ceiling, door panels and black and white tile floor in the adjacent bathroom. Any bed with a chinchilla throw (real or faux) exhibits the fearlessness that such a design statement requires.

(Source: Light Locations, shoot spaces, chijim, Thad Hayes)