Seasonal Palette: Earthy Browns

Goodbye Summer. Hello Fall!

I want a warm, earthy brown room that I can wrap my arms around and settle into like a cashmere blanket. A room layered in the warm, rich hues of brown and the texture of an old leather book.

Brown is the color I crave as summer turns the page and fall creeps in. Brown is a great neutral that offers a little more oomph than your typical neutral and provides the perfect springboard to layer in textures and directional fabrics like velvets and mohair. It is a great unifier creating the perfect backdrop for marrying a mixture of traditional and modern furnishings. Rich, dark chocolate or charcoal walls create effortless ambiance. I like brown rooms with a touch of gilt, old world oil paintings and a lived in leather chair.

I love this quote from Bobby McAlpine's book, The Home Within Us, describing the warm and cozy interior of his once-upon-a-time home he affectionately calls 'The Shack'. It beautifully describes the kind of room I crave that is dark and handsome.

"In those days, I was seeking a kind of somber containment in a house. I loved being in a dark shell - its compression and enclosure. The cabin had such a cratelike nature that it was impossible to resist putting gilt and fine things in its presence. It was a beautiful foil for things unlike itself. And so there was a lesson somewhere for me in the pendulum's swing between rough plank walls and gilt frames, great tapestries and absolutely raw floors."

-Bobby McAlpine

I will absolutely never tire of the warm and inviting aesthetic of this layered brown room from Interior Designer, Dan Carithers. He often uses brown as a neutral in his designs and I just love the results.

" I use a lot of brown because everything goes with it. This is like melted chocolate — sensuous, smooth, velvety. I don't think of it as dark, but rich. It anchors a room and gives you a luxurious feeling. I've used it lots in libraries, with white trim. All the beige, camel, and parchment colors look handsome with it."

-Dan Carithers

Dan Carithers uses a brown palette its fullest potential in the Regent's Park Showhouse from Southern Accents. From the formal areas to the kitchen, bedroom and bathrooms, brown is used as a neutral.

A rich dark brown room can be both traditional and modern at the same time. I love the deep charcoal walls from the Hollywood Hills home of  Interior Designer Adam Braum Straus featured in the August 2011 issue of Lonny Magazine. One of his designer tips speaks to his artful mastery of mixing traditional and modern elements in a room:

"Stick to a palette; color can unify an interior with a range of styles."

-Adam Braum Straus

To keep an environment warm despite all of the dark elements, Straus suggests layering lighting by mixing ceiling lights and chandeliers, table and floor lamps, sconces, picture lights, and candles.

 

Mrs. Howard's speaks to the unifying qualities of the warm brown palette she used in the living room she designed for the Atlanta Homes and Lifestyles Christmas House. To see the transformation visit Mrs. Howard's blog here for the before and after:

"It was a challenging room, with not the best windows, and all kinds of funny angles, soffits and awkward corners. Her solution was to paint all of the walls and trim in high gloss chocolate brown, which masked a lot of the architectural flaws and made the corners disappear. With this change, the room became very warm and inviting."

-Phoebe Howard

 

Today is the first day of fall. What are you dreaming of?

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