The legend of Haints Blue: In the south it was common to paint porch ceilings blue to protect the house from evil sprits. The Gullah people passed along this tradition. In the Gullah culture of the South , ceilings and sometimes doors and shutters were painted blue to symbolize water or sky. According to folklore evil spirits and haints, pronunced “haunts,” would be either be tricked by the sky or the blue symbolized water which they could not cross. Blue glass bottles were also hung in trees to trap haints.
In the past Haint Blue was mixed with milk paint formulas using lime and crushed indigo plant pigments. Today many people use pale or dusty hues but there is no standard color. The color ranges from light blues and blue greens to darker shades and gray blues.
A few years ago, I received a call from a desperate homeowner. She told me she had hired an interior designer, and she just hated her new living room. She told me that the room was beautiful, but she just felt something was wrong.
When I arrived for the consultation, I looked at the room: it was beautiful. She had paid about $14,000 for the new furnishings and paint job. So why did she feel it was not right?
It was because she hated blue, and the entire room was decorated in shades of blue.
Behr Peek-A-Blue T17-04
What is the difference between a paint color consultant and an interior designer?
Not all interior designers are experts in color or paint. They are experts on styles and products. Color is often just a single class in an interior designer’s degree program. Interior designers make their money on upselling products – buying at a significant professional discount and reselling to the client. The paint color of the room is often dictated by the available products for that year.
The Color Marketing Group works on forecasting future color trends which then defines product development and the colors that will be used that season. Interior designers often follow trends and buy those products for their clients.
Paint color consultants are experts on color. Their training is all about how paint is made, used, applied and perceived. Paint color consultants can improve the look of a room with color, at the same time using either existing furnishings or new. Understanding a client’s color perception and mutual communication is key. A good consultant will listen closely to the likes and dislikes of their clients, and will consider lighting, use and mood when helping select the perfect color for a specific space. Not everyone wants to change everything: nor can they afford to. A carefully selected paint color can go a long way to refresh any space.
So what did we do for the desperate homeowner? We could not do anything about the blue patterned rug and blue sofa and blue chairs. We DID change the color of the walls to a soft shade of white, removed some blue pillows, changed out the blue chairs with others we shopped from another room, and recommended the use of an analogous color (that we selected together) for accents to distract from the blue overuse.
Now she loves her new living room.
(BTW: We would never recommend blue if blue was strongly disliked.)
Hint: It’s not cheap! As members of the home improvement industry, we at America’s Color Consultants (ACC) are very lucky to meet and exchange ideas/information with people across the region, country, and even other parts of the world!
Below you will find a link to an extensive overview/analysis of the steps and costs of redoing plaster walls provided by a new colleague, Jen Miller of Jen Reviews. While dry wall is now the most common type of wall surface found in ACC’s work areas, those with older homes (and/or high budgets) should find this well-researched piece of interest. We would venture to say that lath and plaster work (found in most 40’s/50’s built North Arlington homes) is now considered a specialty field and prices for these vanishing plasterers’ expertise will reflect that.
Thank you, Jen! Jen Reviews are packed with lots of good information and excellent research on a wide variety of food, fitness and home products. Jen’s team of reviewers are all experts in their sometimes-niche fields. Check it out. The referenced article was originally published by their sister site, Happy DIY Home.
