Many people have a season they prefer over all others. For some, fall brings to mind the magic when trees first change colors and then lose their leaves and the weather starts to snap. Others love winter with the opportunity to ski and play in the snow. Spring has its own magic when trees blossom and spring flowers bloom.

For those that love the summer, with lots of sunshine and weather that ranges from warm to warmer to too warm, this room helps carry the season with it all year round.

The first summer choice comes from the bright yellow paint on the walls. Yellow is a really tricky color to get right. You want it to remind you of flowers or sunshine, but with the wrong choice your room can look like the inside of an egg yolk. Take the time to test out several choices on your walls before making your final choice. Remember, an entire room of yellow will look darker than a small sample.

This couple chose white for the fireplace, bookshelves and molding. A white ceiling is also a good decision. With yellow and white together, this room looks even more like summer. The mid-range color on the wood floors also helps to create a fresh look. A dark floor would bleach out the look of the room, and too light a floor wouldn’t provide that much-needed contrast. If you want to go with yellow, think about that color choice as you select flooring and other permanent fixtures.

A neutral couch and clean-lined coffee table let the yellow stay the focus of the room, and a few casual yellow elements bring the wall color throughout the space. Spots of green and red – added in a natural way with fresh flowers and plants – echo the summer theme. With the right color and design choices, you can have a summer home all year long.

Now that you’ve put away your holiday decorations, before you put your home accessories right back where you had them, how about taking a few minutes to rethink your table tops?

Nothing makes a room feel stale more than having the same arrangement of accessories placed in the same places year in and year out. With everything mixed up due to the holidays, along with the start of a new year, now is the perfect time to take a fresh approach to your coffee and side tables.

To start, place all of your home accessories on your dining room table. Look at the large pieces that are left. Do you want to move that lamp? Would this side table look better at the other end of the room? The functional goal for small tables involves providing a place to put a glass from every seat in your living room. Do your tables meet that goal?

Once you’ve sorted your large pieces, take the time to consider where your accessories will fit. In this photo, the woman uses this side table for her cup, newspaper and phone. Therefore it’s smart to have one strong accessory, such as this plant, rather than several elements that would constantly get in the way.

Tables that don’t receive heavy use can handle more elements. Remember to combine different heights, and when possible set up your accessories in groups of three or five – odd numbers are more appealing. When you rearrange things, your home looks fresher and your treasured home décor selections will pop in their new locations.

Spring gardening may still be several months away for most of us. This doesn’t mean that you can’t start to dream and plan your summer garden. Soon enough it will be time to start seeds indoors for those summer flowers and vegetables.  If you can’t wait for seedlings, you can always start a small herb or lettuce garden on your window sill.

This kitchen has the typical window right above the kitchen sink.  If the sill is wide enough, this makes an ideal spot to start seedlings or have a container for lettuce and herbs.  You’ll be able to monitor the progress every time you are at the sink, and this will help you remember to water the plants.  Should you not have room on the sill but have counter space in a sunny spot, you can have an herb garden there too. Be mindful of water from the pots or container leaking onto the countertops, especially if you have butcher block wood counter tops.  Placing a tray underneath the pots can help prevent spills.

Placing seedlings or an herb garden on the floor should be avoided if you have pets or small children. Cats are notorious for eating house plants and herbs are no exception.  It’s best to keep your little kitchen garden up off the floor and on a counter or sill.

If you have two rooms that open one to another, you can use color to coordinate the space. Today’s trend of open floor plans mean that living rooms, dining rooms, family rooms and kitchens may all open into another room. Coordinating color between the rooms does not mean that you have to exactly match wall colors and surfaces between the rooms. Playing off a coordinating color palette allows you to mix up the colors to create a flow of design for both spaces.

This home is a nice example of using color to create flow between the foyer, living room and family room beyond.  Red and warm grey can be seen in all three rooms in different shades and on different surfaces. Using these colors in all three rooms unifies the three spaces, making them feel part of the same design plan.

In the foyer the red of the Chinese lacquer chest is carried onto the area rug, which also has a warm gray in it.  The area rug is repeated in the living room, where the sofa is covered in a similar grey to the rug. The red in the rug is then picked up in the chair upholstery in the family room.  White and brown, from the wood accents, are also used in all three spaces.

Carrying the same colors throughout the spaces moves your eye from room to room and gives the entire design a cohesive and polished look.  Limiting the color palette to three or four colors will also help the flow between spaces.

As we meet up with our puzzled homeowner again, he is considering two paint options – the left option on the fan is actually a very dark gold. You can see the color’s origin when you look at the lighter shades and they appear almost yellow.

His second choice is among selections one, two, or three on the other visible color row. He doesn’t want to use the darker choices because they would blend in too much with the fireplace opening and the black trim on the windows.

This is a good first step, but if he heads right to the paint store and orders one of these, he is almost guaranteed to be disappointed for two reasons. Paint chips are printed and the dyes on the paper don’t match the dyes that make up the paint. This means that the color you see on a chip will not exactly match the color of the paint you buy.

The second reason comes from how the light comes into your home. Everything from the direction of your windows to the shape of a room will affect how a paint color will look on a wall, and different walls will make the color look different – sometimes darker or lighter, but sometimes even a different color. To see this, look at a corner where two walls and the ceiling meet. It’s likely that you will see three different tones, even if everything was painted the same color.

So our guy has to go to the paint store and pick up samples of the colors he’s debating about – and maybe a couple of others that are similar, along with an inexpensive foam brush for each color. Then once home, he needs to paint each wall with at least a one foot by one foot square of each color – leaving some space between the colors so they don’t reflect on each other. (If this bothers you, paint some white poster boards and tape them on the walls.)

As a final step, he needs to live with his choices for a few days, looking at them in the morning, afternoon and evening, and with natural light as well as with the home’s evening lighting. Over a short period of time, he will know which one he will be happiest living with. Paint is a very personal choice. It’s worthwhile to take the time to select what will work best for you.

When you have a room with neutral carpeting, simple moldings and no architectural features, your choice of wall color can be based on personal preferences without much if any reference to what is in the room. But in the case of the man in the photo, it’s more complicated.

Paint in this case has to work with the off-white stone and black opening of the fireplace, black trim in the room as well as the varied shades of brown making up the wood floor. Then he may have some furniture that will be going in the room as well as an area rug or two.

From the paint selection fan in his hand, it’s clear that he hasn’t yet narrowed down his choices. Realistically, the first step is deciding what specific color he likes. With this set-up, he could go light or dark, mid-tones and almost any color.

The trick will be getting just the right version of his preferences. Too dark and the floor and fireplace will stand out like a beacon. Paint it too light or neutral, the color of the wall currently, and nothing will come into focus.

Suppose we start with a brown – dark enough to blend with the richer tones of the wood floor while still light enough to keep the room from feeling gloomy. The floor has warm tones and the fireplace tones are cool, so the brown needs to balance cool and warm to work well with both pieces. To begin, this man needs to narrow his focus to several possible browns that meet these criteria. In part two, we’ll talk about how to go from the paint fan to the final color.

Tangerine is the first new color to show up in the 2012 color trends, and from kitchen gadgets to these flip flops, it’s getting some attention. Teal appears almost as often as an accent. Since these two colors are at opposite ends of the color wheel, the really stand out when paired.

Although you may not want to convert your home to a tangerine and teal wonderland, you might want to consider adding some splashes of these colors to your home to provide a quick color update. Here are a few suggestions.

If your kitchen or a bathroom could use a brightener, you could add an area rug and some towels in these vivid colors. Look for rugs with a rubber backing that go in the washing machine. These colors need to be sparkling clean to work. This is a low-cost way to make a change.

Look for tangerine and/or teal throw pillows. Brighten up a chair or sofa with these colors and you’ve added an unexpected vivid element to your décor. Teal also stands out in glassware. Look for glass vases or bowls to perk up a bookshelf. If possible, set the glass against a white or light background to help the color shine. Notice how well the teal color works in this photo.

Tangerine works well in large color segments. Teal is better as a color accent. If you’re using both, have tangerine take the lead and let teal serve more in the background. Notice in the photo the tangerine sofa blends well in the room and the teal accents toward the back still have a presence.

Are you ready to take a color chance? How about tackling two of the stars of 2012, tangerine and teal?

Balance is something that we seek in many aspects of our lives: work, home, finances and family. Achieving a balanced room may be easier than finding balance between work and family or balancing the checkbook.

Creating a balanced design for your room can be done by simply rearranging furniture, lighting and accessories.

This living room is a nice example of a balanced room design. Centered off of the fireplace, the living room arrangement is balanced and symmetrical. When creating a balanced room design, think of Noah and the pairs of animals. Pairs are key in achieving balance in a room. The sofa in this living room faces the fireplace and anchors the seating area. Flanking it is a pair of tray-top side tables. These side tables would be the perfect place for a pair of table lamps. A pair of chairs sits across a coffee table from a pair of ottoman stools that serve as extra seating.

Low stools or ottomans make great seating in front of focal points like windows, televisions or fireplaces because they do not block the view. Centering the seating area is an area rug. This area rug is a little small and could extend under the seating to help tie all the elements together. Plants can make great accessories for a room. Other lighting and accessories would be nice additions to this living room. Dressing up the mantel and area above it would finish the room design.

Wood floors in the bathroom were once avoided because of the worry about the wood staining and warping with moisture.  However, with today’s hardwoods, engineered wood, and laminate floors, wood floors can work in the bathroom. In fact, they can make beautiful bathroom floors.

If you do choose to put wood floors, hardwood or engineered, in your bathroom, definitely talk with us first.  You’ll want to make sure that the wood you choose can withstand the humidity and moisture in a bathroom.  For this reason, laminate flooring might be a good choice to consider as well.  Laminate flooring has come a long way in the past few years. There is a wide selection of colors and wood grains that can imitate most woods.

Whatever flooring you do choose, a few accessories can warm up the floors and the bathroom.  One or two bathmats, or a larger cotton rug that can be washed, can be placed over the floor to absorb water from the tub or shower. A rug by the sink is another good idea.  Getting in the habit of wiping up splashes of water is a good idea for wood floors.

If you want to add heat under your wood floors, be sure to discuss this when choosing your flooring. The heating elements will need to be installed first.  This might also affect what flooring will work in the bathroom.

Wood flooring adds warmth to a bathroom that stone or tile doesn’t.  With some thought and added care, wood floors can work in the bathroom just as well as these traditional choices.

Salmon pink on the living room wall may not be for everyone, but this living room does a beautiful job of balancing the bold color on the wall with neutral furnishings. Bright color on the wall, like sunny yellow, grass green, or salmon pink, can bring life and energy to a room’s design.  Don’t be afraid of color on the walls. Just pick a color that you love and will be happy to live with everyday.

Of course, if you really love color you can have color on the walls, furniture or floor that contrasts and complements each other. Monochrome or multi-colored, colorful rooms can be calming or energizing depending on what color or colors are used. Pink can be a calming color, especially when paired with neutrals. The warm neutrals of the furniture and flooring in this living room create a warm, inviting living space.  The polka dots on the ottomans tie into the wall color with a subtle pop of pink.

Warm wood tones and creams on the furniture and floor could work with a number of wall colors. It is easy to replace a wall color with new paint or wallpaper which is much cheaper than investing in furniture and carpet.

Be bold with paint colors. You can always repaint if you get tired of the color. And if you have neutral furnishings, you can pick up the new color in accents and objects around the room. If you love salmon pink, incorporate it into your décor.