Customer Reviews

Neutral Color Schemes: Neutral Palettes and Dramatic Accents for Inspirational Interiors

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Alice Buckley has created an ingenious way to self-help when choosing a color scheme for any room or home. She has taken 100+ basic colors, recommended for walls, and pulled together beautiful color schemes, showing you the basic wall color and up to 4 accent colors to consider using with that wall color. On pages 28-31 are small examples of the 102 wall colors with the page numbers of the fuller color scheme listed on each color. This makes it quite easy to find what you're looking for. Granted you might be looking for a wall color that isn't depicted, but that doesn't take away from the book when you consider there are millions of colors one can use. No book can cover them all and it would be ludicrous to expect that. Even 100 colors is ambitious enough.

She further divides the colors into groups and at the beginning of each group she gives you a beautiful picture of a room using one of the color schemes found in that group. Naturally we'd like to see more pictures, but when you consider that no one will have a room similar to the rooms depicted, there's no way more pictures would truly satisfy. I can expect the author means you to focus on the color schemes presented, not the room photos. Let's face it. You've got to stretch yourself at some point and do some thinking for yourself. If your color isn't shown, find one that comes close and adapt.

Would the book be better with the actual brand and paint color mentioned? No. A book can never reproduce a color exactly as that color would be in reality. Even the paint manufacturer can't provide you with chips that are perfect representations of their own paint color. So you have to be smart enough to recognize that there is no way to reproduce paint perfectly in a chip or a book and you've got to make the best selections you can that appear closest to the colors you find represented, then test the colors first in your home before rolling out a big purchase. There are many factors that will alter the color of the paint once you get it on the wall: lighting, time of day, other colors nearby, etc. So even the best color experts are prone to make mistakes if testing is not done first. Colors also look different on huge surfaces than in small sections. That's what makes it both tricky and challenging.

Anyone who would rate this book below a 5 star is naive and doesn't appreciate the extreme difficulty of creating a book of this sort. Congratulations to you, Ms Buckley, for such an excellent resource. I am happy to recommend this book to anyone wanting help with developing a color scheme that works and plan on using it as a quick resource with my clients.

It does provide many color combinations, but they just weren't appealing to me. Many palettes included one or two interesting colors, but then they would be paired with something that to me looked dated, like a terra cotta color. I much prefer the Domino Book of Decorating.

Overall I liked this book and will keep it. It's beautifully put together. However, many of the "neutral" color schemes are much darker and more intense than expected, even strange looking, and the color palette seems a bit limited. I had several ideas for interior color schemes I'd hoped to explore with this book, but none of the combinations in the book came close to those I'd envisioned.

While the book provides many photos of rooms, there still aren't enough examples to picture most color combinations as they'd look in a room. Although the paint colors all have names, no manufacturer is given, so you'll have to ask a paint store to help you match any colors you want to use.

I am extremely pleased with the content and format of this book. It serves my needs very well.