The Perfect Palette: Fifty Inspired Color Plans for Painting Every Room in Your Home [Hardcover]

Bonnie Rosser Krims (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1998

Reminiscent of the successful "Laura Ashley: Using Color to Decorate Your Home", this book, the "only" guidebook available for selecting and combining paint color, includes 50 fail-safe color combinations for home interiors. Color photos & illustrations.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Bonnie Rosser Krims wrote The Perfect Palette for those brave souls ready to try something that has daunted many an interior designer: painting the walls something besides white. Even though paint is one of the least expensive ways to change the look of a room, most people find those little cards of color chips too intimidating. Krims's 50 color plans are foolproof combinations based on the aesthetics of certain places and familiar objects, with very specific details to help you plan which palette to use with your furnishings. Each page describes a palette of three Benjamin Moore paint colors, though Krims provides a cross-reference to two other brands and urges readers not to feel limited to a particular brand. Accent and trim colors are suggested, and three adjectives are used to describe the mood of the palette. "Meet Me in Miami," a soft orange/blue/green palette, is "fun, easygoing, peaceful" and "works well in ranch houses, deck houses, and 1950s contemporary houses;" Krims suggests it specifically for brightening a basement or family room. "The Emerald Isle," a green/yellow/violet combination with accents of dark orange and white trim, is "sassy, lush, luminous," and will make darker wood furniture "look lovely." Color Palettes is both intensely practical and utterly lovely, and will almost certainly inspire some brave experimentation. No more boring white rooms!

Review

About The Perfect Palette: Most of us can never expect to achieve the color coordinating skills of the master artists but getting one step closer to that Architectural Digest dream home isn't as tough as it may seem. -- Christian Science Monitor, August 5, 1998

The folks who work with paint colors for a living have written some informative new books that can help you move from inspiration to execution. The two books with the most distinctive color philosophies are The Perfect Palette by Bonnie Rosser Krims and Color Palettes by Suzanne Butterfield. -- San Diego Union Tribune

The only paint selection and color compatibility guide, The Perfect Palette will help you bring fabulous style and atmosphere to your home with ease. [Editors choice] -- Country Home & Gardens Book Club, June 1998

This color bible...does the thinking and experimenting for you. -- Christy Ferer, author of Decorating on a Dime

While the book's precepts may sound ambitious, its format, instructions, and photographs will be a valuable aid to even the most inept decorator. -- The Boston Globe, July 16, 1998

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 137 pages
• Publisher: Warner Books (May 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446523488
• ISBN-13: 978-0446523486
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 8.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (64 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #646,195 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #49 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Interior Design > Painting & Wallpapering

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lovely book, so easy to read and nice to browse through!, May 11, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Perfect Palette: Fifty Inspired Color Plans for Painting Every Room in Your Home (Hardcover)

I like this book because it is so easy to read and use. The photos and drawings are especially beautiful and give you an idea of how the color recipes will look in a room. The most fun for me was to flip through all of the different color sections and try to imagine the colors in my own house. I love how the text helps the reader to understand the mood and atmosphere that the recipes will create. I have already chosen three recipes for my house and bought 1 quart each of the paint (like the author suggests)! I appreciated that the more complicated reading about painting techniques, tips and tools are separated out into the intro and appendices. I expected these sections to be "heavy" reading and hard to get through but they are very simple and straightforward. I actually liked reading them after enjoying the beautiful recipes... These sections are VERY useful and have really prepared me to paint it "right" the first time. Especially helpful are the tips on how to make a hall look deeper, or a room look less boxy, etc.

My favorite recipes: "Blueberry Hill" "Pompeii" and "Lilac."

This was a very small financial investment in a book that will really change my whole house.

I am choosing colors that are more adventurous than I would ever have chosen before.

Enjoy this book, I did (and still do).

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful coffee table quality HOW TO book THAT REALLY WORKS, June 16, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Perfect Palette: Fifty Inspired Color Plans for Painting Every Room in Your Home (Hardcover)

I'm not a writer, and I'm REALLY no interior decorator. So, when I looked through the zillions of How To books, this one just stood out. I'd even checked out one of the Martha Stewart ones - no contest. With Stewart's methods you'd need a month and a staff of painters. Sorry Martha, you never picked up a brush.

But not only is The Perfect Palette a gorgeous book with flawless room color combining recipes that come out looking amazing, but Bonnie Krims ACTUALLY USED THEM ALL, she's tried them. Plus, she's done her own illustrations and written a little story about each recipe. The book is like a coffee table book, but it's also a really good HOW TO kind of book. I thought doing a new paint job on my rooms was going to be a real drudge, but with this book I really got into it because the colors were so different from what I'd normally think would work, but on the walls, amazing!

Then, based on the finished walls, I used the book's instructions on setting up a room, and after rearranging some of the furniture and knick-knacks and lamps - my friends were blown away. That's all I can say. If you're really serious about getting your rooms in shape, I think this is THE book to buy.

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Color Plans, not a decorating book., February 12, 2001

By 

S Frye (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Perfect Palette: Fifty Inspired Color Plans for Painting Every Roomin Your Home (Paperback)

This book was extremely helpful to me in finding color combinations for various rooms. I found it especially useful in rooms where I already had a feature I couldn't/wouldn't change. For example, I have custom window shades in my kitchen that it isn't practical to replace, but I want to paint the walls. By using the color plans in the book for the colors in my shades, I've found three different choices for the walls that wouldn't have occurred to me on my own (probably because none of them are off-white).

Reading the other reviews, I think people who expect a 'decorating' book will be disapointed in this book. There are very few photographs of actual rooms, just a picture of each color combination. But if you need a reference for colors that work together you should find this book helpful. In addition to the three major colors in each scheme, the author suggests wood tones and accent colors to go with each plan. She also offers some excellent suggestions for choosing colors outside the plans, for example - use the darkest, richest end of the color chip to select a color, then work back to lighter shades until the color is usable in your particular situation.

I found the book very helpful, and feel certain it's a reference I will continue to use.