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Color Chic. How To Add Color To Your Life- Home, Fashion, and Beauty Tips

Color Chic. How To Add Color To Your Life- Home, Fashion, and Beauty Tips

Sharon & Brad open up their homes and share style tips to make color work in your life in a very chic way

From runway to your home… adding bold moves of color can be the perfect dramatic change to take you from drab to fab!

Before you paint your home, listen to this show…

The right colors are beautiful but so many of us are color challenged and fear color so much that they live a drab existence or overload on the wrong color that cheapens the intended result.

In this episode of Focus on Style Talk Radio, co-hosts Sharon Haver & Brad Boles tell you how to add color to your home with paint and accessory touches, makeup and wardrobe. A little color goes a long way, so sit back and learn what’s hot and what’s not in this information-packed show. Listen to home style & painting tips from Sharon & Brad on how they use color in their private lives and how Sharon just repainted with some brilliant colors from Farrow & Ball.

Color Inspiration Board from home to the catwalk

Color Inspiration Board from home to the catwalk

Listen to radio braodcast of Color Chic. How To Add Color To Your Life:

Home & Style tips discussed on this show:

It’s the perfect time of year to tzuj it up a a bit with color, whether it be for your home, wardrobe or makeup. Many of us have a tendency to shy away from color or pile it on so they look like a beach ball or they belong in the circus. There are chic and rather economic ways to incorporate color without much risk.

  • A fresh coat of paint is the perfect way to brighten up your home rather inexpensively.
  • Watch how light travels through a room and test a paint color by living with it a bit rather than rely on the swatch in the paint store.Very high end paint changes color throughout the day and as light travels across the room.
  • Brad recommends Farrow & Ball for the smaller tester size paint cans that they sell.

    • >>READ: Crazy Color Chic- How to Update Your Wardrobe With Color

    • Sharon just painted two walls in her loft with Farrow & ball paint- bold Blazer red in a high gloss for the area around the pool table for a cozy yet bold burst of color. And a very matte, almost chalky, Charleston Gray taupey color to compliment a red lacquer Cappellini cabinet on a facing wall.
    • Farrow & Ball: Living With Color

      Farrow & Ball: Living With Color

      Her home design is is more industrial meets organic in in color values with pops of vivid glass so the combination of the Farrow & Ball high gloss brilliant paint and a chalky matte neutral helps the colors play off each other in a chic and complimentary way.

    • If walls are already challenged, a matte finish can stave off the imperfections where as something as simple as even an eggshell finish will emphasize the wall’s imperfections.
    • Before you add intense color in a room full of neutrals, try a sample of the color first.

    >>READ: Home Staging Tips For Picture Perfect Interiors

    • Brad warns that you need to understand the direction that windows stream in light. Different light in the room over the course of a day effects how the color appears.
    • For one wall that appeared too brown rather than gray in certain light, Sharon added a metallic wash of a discontinued Ralph Lauren Duchesse Satin Paint in Candleight that she had been hoarding.
    • eBay is a marvelous way to find out of stock and discontinued paint if you want to extend the area of color.
    • Benjamin Moore Color Capture app is a fantastic app to match paint color. Sharon used to it to "remember" the exact orange color used on the Impromptu Madness videos wall.
    • There are tricks to transition color throughout a home. Brad used several shades of Farrow & Ball blues when he decorated his home, all past on how the light traveled throughout the day.
    • When Brad designed Jill and Bobby Zarin’s apartment on The Real Housewives of New York City, he used Ralph Lauren Denim, a rather deep shade of blue for Allyson’s room. He says that you don’t have to live in fear of a darker shade and it depends on how you use it in a smaller room.

    >> CONSIDER: Home Style Shopping Guide

    • Trick of the Trade: The best and safest white is called Decorator While and available in most paint brands.
    • Sharon learned that when you use the building’s cheap paint in a rental, it doesn’t last as long as a better paint that you provide.
    • Stella McCartney Shaggy Deer Falabella Small Tote in French Blue at Saks.com

      Stella McCartney Shaggy Deer Falabella Small Tote in French Blue at Saks.com

      Brad suggests that when you have an income rental property, don’t paint it a color to suit you but select a more neutral color like a cafe ole and use Decorator’s White for trim.

    • Using a different color paint for molding or trim creates a more polished and traditional finish for a room that doesn’t have great architectural bones.
    • Avacado green is making a comeback.
    • When you mix two color combinations, make sure the pigment concentration is the same or they at least compliment each other.

  • It’s the same with mixing color combinations when it comes to clothing. make sure the colors are in the same family and share o similar depth of pigment concentration.
  • The rich 70′s color palette of teal, gold, fuschia, purple mixed with browns is making a strong runway comeback. Seen on the catwalk at Prabal Gurang, Marc Jacobs, Prada, etc.

    • >> See our complete collection of fashion show photos & runway reviews

    • Mix a dash of color into a an urban wardrobe with a hit of bold electric or French blue that works so well with black because of its saturated nature.
    • Opaque tights or pantyhose are an affordable way to add color to a neutral wardrobe.
    • Colored tights are most flattering with a mini if you have great legs or with a knee length skirt. Avoid colored tights and mid-calf hems, it breaks the leg too much.
    • Hue Opaque Sheer to Waist Tights at Bloomingdales.com

      Hue Opaque Sheer to Waist Tights at Bloomingdales.com

      Cream or white tights are best avoided.

    • Add a huge pop of color to your wardrobe with a bold colored purse. A handbag in a brilliant color with a textured finish like a faux animal skin is an easy fix to beat the wardrobe blahs.
    • Use brilliant colors as an accessory, like rich saturated colors with a lot of pigment that can be worn with almost every neutral in your wardrobe.

  • Makeup for spring has a lot of strong colors, including pale turquoise and yellow eye shadows that Brad cautions not to try at home.
  • If you want to try color around your eyes, Sharon advise to use a purply, mulberry or navy eye pencil to bring out your eye’s natural color rather than distract with a garish crazy eye color.
  • Although they may be trendy, crazy nail colors that look like your hand was smashed in a car door or you need a toe tag, are best avoided if you are not a kid.
  • When it comes to nail color, keep weird colors to a pedicure.
  • Choose more neutral or nude colors for a manicure, particularly if you are over 40.

    • Color can add a bright and beautiful look to your home and wardrobe economically, if not on the cheap. Don’t skimp on quality when it comes to color as it shows, it’s not as easy to fake as black. – Sharon Haver & Brad Boles

    Runway Images: Image.net

    Published on December 21, 2010
    Sharon Haver & Brad Boles

    Sharon Haver & Brad Boles

    Sharon Haver and Brad Boles have been collaborating for years.

    They met on their first cover shoot for VOGUE Mexico, "back in the day," as Brad likes to call it. They continued to booked as part of fab fashion trio for photo shoots- Sharon as the fashion stylist, Brad on makeup, and the late North Rebis on hair. Either making everyday clothes look more exotic or couture even more fantastic, they became longtime friends on the other side of the scrim.

    Sharon is the founder and editor in chief of FocusOnStyle and Brad is its roving editor at large and regularly seen on "The Real Housewives of New York City" as Jill Zarin's gay husband.

    Still continuing to finish each other's sentences, but not always in total agreement, Sharon Haver and Brad Boles will have you in stitches and looking pretty amazing too. Watch Impromtpu Madness for video style tips and listen to Focus on Style Talk Radio for more fashion chat. They are presently writing a style book and developing a TV series.

    Sharon's bio | Sharon's stories | Brad's bio & stories

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