Add style and sophistication to your living room, dining room or bedroom with wide, vertical stripes in complementary but contrasting colours.
We painted this living room in 9-inch-wide stripes because that’s what worked best with the room dimensions. We measured the length of all four walls and found the common number, then accordingly decided on the stripe width (in some cases we are forced to vary the width by an imperceptible half inch to accommodate the width of the walls, if they vary).
For this particular job, Benjamin Moore’s “Aura” paint in an eggshell finish was used. The colours are Taos Taupe and Stone Harbour, both elegant shades of taupe.
The room has standard eight-foot ceilings and the effect of the stripes makes it seem higher. If we had also painted the ceiling in one of the shades of the stripes, the effect would have been multiplied. Contrary to popular wisdom, darker colours recede and therefore make a room look taller when they are applied to the ceiling. However, in this case the ceiling was painted white; white ceilings reflect light better and the room is decorated outside its two windows by trees. And we were also adding wide crown moulding in white, so we left the ceiling white, too.
What striping in this style achieves is a sense of rhythm, formality and grace. Using brighter colours, for example, navy and white, a nautical or coast theme can be created; using purple and pink, a wild and happy girl’s bedroom gets a kick!
Vertical stripes are mathematical, perhaps more correctly, geometric, and as a result, balance is needed; in this room two black leather Bauhaus style love seats flank the fireplace and coordinate with the stripes, adding an anchor and a softness via their upholstery and their colour-coordinated throw pillows. They’re also symmetrical, so the placement of items like lamps in different but complementary style helps it from being too studied, and more interesting.
We can create these stripes in any home, using the suitable width and colours. Women in Rollers will come to your home and reveal what effect stripes can have in your decorating scheme. We also do faux finishes and wallpapering.
