Previously, I discussed about giving life to a humdrum hallway by providing unique furniture. Here’s another way to give that old hallway some pizzazz! At the Kips Bay Designer Show House interior designer extraordinaire, Larry Laslo, showed us his flair for drama.

At the penthouse suite, Mr. Laslo covered the entrance walls in a red and gold velvet animal stripe fabric – called Magnetism, part of his new fabric collection he designed for Robert Allen fabrics. Doesn’t it just mesmerize and pull you in? He then proceeded to add an oversized Jansen sunburst mirror that just radiates “look at me!” in a very elegant way. A simple bench upholstered in a jeweled striped fabric called Aquavite completes the picture.

Hanging above the foyer is a brass Sputnik chandelier. The other wall of the foyer displays a mixed-media artwork by Perez Flores called Prochromatique. A pair of shell sconces flanks the artwork and a matching plaster console table provides space to drop your keys or display your curios. Just because the hallway is the least important space in the house doesn’t mean you have to settle for boring!

If you’re looking for more inspiration, head out to the Kips Bay Designer Show House. This year’s event is held at the Manhattan Center on 200 E. 66th St. in New York City and is on display until May 22nd.

At Last, Color Me Happy 

Here it is. Okay, these photos maybe don’t show the color as accurately as they could. It is a biscuity brown, soft, like a pale coffee ice cream. The detail at the back of the bookshelves was inspired! And was the brainchild of my painter, Paul Flessa. It’s a deep raiseny plum, almost like a rum raisin, so the whole living room is a little like a big bowl of ice cream, and what’s wrong with that? 

You’ll see, too, that I had the window leading painted black, which involved a great deal of sanding, priming, and other activities I don’t want to know about. All I know is the painter was here a lot. And now, it looks great and my bank account is further depleted.  

Next up: the hallway, the windows in the other rooms. I’ll let you know how it goes. 

But let’s not linger there; instead, let’s talk more about green giving, as the holiday season is now just about to swallow us whole. 

You can buy recycled holiday cards, and that doesn’t mean hoarding the ones you got last year and then scratching out the name of the person who sent them and writing in your own. That is known as recycling, but it’s also known as extremely tacky. Instead, check out the cards made from recycled materials at Holiday Classics.  

For a mind-boggling list of websites that sell eco-friendly gifts, go to Ecomall. 

And don’t forget that often a home-made gift is the best one to give, or to receive. If you’re artistically inclined, now’s the time to get to work on making a present, but remember too that you don’t have to be an artist to make a gift. A CD with favorite songs, a photo album with photos of the family, a box of cookies will all make the recipient happier, probably, than another plastic Santa Claus singing “Rock Around The Christmas Tree.”  All you have to do to step away from that Santa is think of a landfill towering with the things. 

And then for the person who has everything, there’s the gift of green. Yes, that green, as in greenbacks.  

Often people who don’t need any more stuff are thrilled to receive a donation to a worthy cause made in their name. Just make sure you match the cause to the person, so that you’re not giving Uncle Dave the Dog-hater a donation.

Reader Jackie Law writes in with this question for Stylehound: 

“My son’s room needs to be upgraded. He wants one black wall with red and a little silver. The walls have paint on top of wallpaper and a border over that. Any suggestions?” 

I love being asked questions like this. Not because I have the answers, but because then I don’t feel like the only one who is stumped by design.  

Can someone bail us out here? Any ideas for Jackie and her, um, creatively-inclined son? Alexia, perhaps you can come up with something? 

Diving Into The Wreck  

Once the electrician got here, he got started working and I fled to the study while he made a lot of noise in the rest of the apartment. When I came in and said, “how’s it going?’ he said the fateful words, “not so good,” as he crouched by the baseboard. Dust was everywhere.

The wires, he said, were so old they were disintegrating in his hands.  When he took his lunch break, I can’t say that the place looked actually better than it had before.

But that wasn’t enough. He came back the next day, this time with a fellow electrician. There was a ladder involved. It turned out they couldn’t change the fuse box over to circuit breakers, because to do that would involve ripping out one of the kitchen cabinets.  

“I’ll just wait until I re-do the kitchen,” I said, thinking that will be roughly about the time hell freezes over. 

It made me feel a little queasy, the whole thing, seeing chucks of my walls disappear, like watching someone undergo surgery—not that I’ve ever seen that.

But maybe it’s like cosmetic surgery. Maybe it will be a great face-lift, and afterward, everyone will say, “has your apartment been on vacation?” 

Even the cats were freaked out.

Luckily, the painter, the original guy who did such a great job even with my terrible paint choices, said he can send a guy over to re-plaster, this week even. So maybe the next part of this ordeal will go more quickly.  

Meantime, I’m still checking paint colors. Luckily Sheffield’s own Alexia Rosetti knows a couple of things about new colors.

For those who like to play guru and proclaim the latest on all subjects, we have the color forecast for 2008-2009 for you. Pantone, the leading color authority, regularly studies the color pulse of the worldwide community and forecasts the latest color trends that will be used in the graphic, interior, industrial and fashion design worlds.

Not surprisingly, the influence is leaning towards environmental concerns. Apple greens, yellow-greens, acid yellows, and sky blues are the colors that will dominate the design fields. These colors project a “strong, environmental message” to the world.

The color palettes that Pantone is projecting for 2008-09 include the biological identity, diversity, and the collective conscious palettes. The biological identity palette is human and voluptuous – amber golds, desert sands, purpled wines, and brick reds. The diversity palette consists of herbal greens, deep forest greens, astral blues, bronzes – reflective of the environmental colors that are dominating the community. The collective conscious palette shows a more stable background consisting of navy blues, khakis, reddish browns, and mid-tone grays.

These color palettes can be combined to offer more visual excitement – such as the grape purples against the astral blues. The deep greens can be fused with the bronzes, the amber golds complement plummy wines and the apple greens can play off the sky blues.

All of a sudden my mauve walls are looking SO last decade……quick, where’s my paint swatches?

The electrician was supposed to come at 9 am, today, so I made sure everything was ready by about ten ‘til nine, and then waited. And waited. Luckily, I do most of my writing at home, so it wasn’t wasted time—in fact, it’s remarkable how much one can get done under the pressure of an electrician arriving any minute.  

But I figured I would also use some of the time to try out some new wall colors. This helped me remember again why it is I’m going through all this tsuris with the scheduling of the electrician—ultimately, this will lead me to a home with cleaner walls (I mean, less cluttered with unnecessary outlets sticking out), which in turn will allow me to paint over those dreadful colors I now have.  

One problem with choosing paint color has been that in order to really try out the new color, you have to buy at least a pint of the stuff. Benjamin Moore has a brilliant marketing ploy, which is that they make tiny little jars of trial paint, in real colors. They even sell a cute little roller and tray so you can roll the paint on a sample piece of the wall.  

First, I tried a deep red for the hallway. The color itself is great, as you can see, but it’s much too dark, especially as the hall is dark anyway, having no windows (as is the case  in most halls).  

Then I tried a pale sage green.  

I really like this one, but I’ll have to decide if I want this in the hall, and something off-white in the living room, or if I want the sage in the living room. The trouble with that idea is that the living room will be very, very, green if I do that. Or maybe I could do the old one-wall-in-a-color-one-off-white trick. 

Next, I’ll try a couple of off-whites—but not right now, because, you won’t believe it, but the electrician is actually here! Better one hour and 45 minutes late than never, I suppose. 

I suppose. I’ll let you know after the work is done. If it is ever done. 

Okay, so I returned to the apartment after the painting extravaganza, and voila—clearly it had been kidnapped for a guest appearance on “Miami Vice.” Or it was taken over by the Ladies’ Decorating Society and Drum Corp of Boca Raton.  And I’ve never even been to Florida. I have nothing against Florida. I’m sure it’s great. 

The surprising thing is that I hate the peach and love the blue. The blue, remember, was a last-minute switch, a sudden turn into a color I thought was about the most cheerful I’ve ever seen in my life. And coming into the hallway for the first time today, I felt my heart lift. Hooray, hooray for turquoise! 

Then I looked around the corner into the living room, and my heart sank right into the hardwood floor. GAK. 

Well, see for yourself. Here’s the hall, first in white:

And then, in the new blue:

You’ll note that I also asked the painter to build a partial wall, which restored the original. Great, great blue. And I love the little curved bench against the blue. But look:

GAK. The peach doesn’t even show in this photo as being as terrible as it truly is. In reality, the peach with the blue recalls a dreadful color combo from the early 1990s called “seafoam green and peach.” YUCK.

But it’s done. The painter, who is from Jamaica, loved it and said it reminded him of home.

Maybe I’ll invest in a few asparagus ferns or potted palms and put up a sea-shell curtain in a doorway.  

I think I need professional help.