Art Deco House: How to Determine the Proper Colors
Sleek, cool, functional, bold, industrial, smart -- the adjectives go on and on to describe Art Deco furniture, designs, fashion, and color-schemes. The Art Deco movement (1925-1940s) borrowed colors from nature and industrialized Europe and American landscapes and applied them to both functional and romantic art and design. Art Deco houses in the '30s and '40s displayed muted greens, creams and ruby reds highlighted with chrome and gold details. When coloring a house in the Art Deco style, consider mixing natural hues with the color of machinery. Does this Spark an idea?
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Things You'll Need
- Art Deco artwork
- Art Deco home-design pictures
- Costume jewelry
- 1925 40s office pictures
- 1925-1940s cocktail pictures
Instructions
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Architecture, exterior and interior designs from the Art Deco period show playful design mixed with functional application. Browse through Art Deco furniture. If you're lucky enough to already be surrounded by chunky, sophisticated, square or rotund furniture of the Art Deco period (1925-1940s), you have the ideal color-scheme in front of you from which to base your house color choices. If not, take a gander at a yard sale or flip through a local garage or estate sale selling vintage Art Deco furniture. Examine the colors of those lipstick red vanity tables and glossy-brown and cream inlaid-wood cabinets. Snap a few photographs to capture the color patterns. Note how the colors work together. Take these color samples to a paint store to see which colors you can whip up for your home.
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Pinks, greens and pastels plus solid designs characterize the Art Deco movement. Study Art Deco artwork. Flip through a color photography book full of Art Deco artwork or take a trip to a gallery or exhibition focused on Art Deco artists. Select colors for your house that complement those the artists used: tawny autumn shades, muted greens, muddy pinks and eggshell blues. Or borrow the robust pastel and solid colors found in work by artists Jean Dunand, Michel Dubost, Gustav Klimt and Séraphin Soudbinine.
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Shades of green define the Art Deco movement. Note the greens. In any photograph of a 1930s office, home or living room the predominant color is green. Jade, Chinese, juniper, foam, mint, sea, fern -- all of these natural but slightly muted greens invaded the Art Deco period. Sort through paint samples or through Art Deco catalogs to find the greens you would like to use. Add beige, brown or small amounts of blue, pink, black or silver to tranquilize that natural green into a more industrial shade.
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Pick through costume jewelry, like Bakelite. The 1930s and '40s brought costume jewelry fashions that emphasized Hollywood glamour. Visit any antique shop and ask for jewelry made of Bakelite, one of the first synthetic plastics. Choose colors for your house that mimic these eccentric bracelet and necklace colors. Load your home with blood reds, amber tones, gold and chrome details, creamsicle oranges and clear emerald greens. Where possible, apply these practical but enjoyable colors to exterior shutters, eaves and doors.
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Cocktails exemplify Art Deco technique. Study choice cocktail recipe books with color images of mixed drinks. Those ice cubes, round- and square-rimmed glasses, and sunlit-colored whiskey -- stirred or shaken with a metallic mixer -- create an Art Deco living room in a glass. Borrow those earthy colors, translucent touches and metallic hints found in olive-plopped martinis and add them into your home's color-scheme.
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Tips & Warnings
Highlight natural slate grays, coral reds, violets, creams and denim blues with black and metallic accents: A silver or gold hint adds the sexy bravado of that modern age.
Note that in classic Art Deco homes of the period, homeowners painted walls that complemented their neighbors' exterior and interior home designs.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit Lampshade with Varicolored Stone and Lace image by Astroid from Fotolia.com art deco building in boston image by Stephen Orsillo from Fotolia.com art deco clock image by hazel proudlove from Fotolia.com 1920s art deco street lamps image by green308 from Fotolia.com martini with olives image by Monika Olszewska from Fotolia.com
