Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Advice Needed: Repainting the community after 12 years in residence

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Apr 17, 2010, at 6:33 AM, Fred H Olson wrote:

> He said that if we tried to choose a color by consensus,
> we'd end up with beige.

This would be color by compromise, not consensus, but that aside, it  
probably would have been beige because people have so little knowledge  
about colors and how important they are. Or rather because they don't  
know, they are afraid of them.

Mangoville is wonderful. So light and fun. And sophisticated.

Beige is a color that is very hard to do in most materials. It has to  
be a good quality wool, not shiny house paint. We have beige linoleum  
because the predominant wind was going toward warm colors and  
supposedly beige is a warm color. It's really a neutral. Grey is also  
hard to do in paint and  porcelain.

The problem is that beige linoleum is about the dullest thing you can  
put on a floor. We have natural pine framing in the CH. Neither color  
compliments the other.

And as for lightening your mood, no one names anything after beige.  
The Beige Belles? Has such a nice ring to it, right?

The idea that if you paint your walls a light beige or buy beige light  
switch plates they won't show dirt is true because they just look  
dirty all the time.

You can see how much I love beige. I think it should be one of the  
characteristics of cohousing -- no ideology, child-friendly, has CH,  
green building, no beige.

It may seem unrelated to cohousing but I can name 60 things that would  
have gone better if we had red floors.

Let a colorist choose the palette from which you choose. No  
compromises. Go bold. Or floral. Or ocean. Or forest. Think about a  
beige forest. Not good on a Saturday morning.

Sharon.
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Sharon Villines
The truth is more important than the facts. -- Frank Lloyd Wright