Going Dutch with De Stijl

When you formulate ideas about what you love to live in, you also find that the inspiration was always embedded in your brain: stored away, waiting to resurface as some influence for something as simple as your living room walls. I felt, right away, what I wanted to paint our living room "nook" that sits under the loft level. I definitely wanted the living room to feel cozy. Modern cozy. I love clean spaces, but we also really do "live" in our living room -- watching movies, having friends over for games, eating, drinking wine, etc.

{ BEFORE }

It had started with some paint chips in shades of tomato red and warm charcoal gray and then this mood board, with influences by everything from the Corbusier print on our wall to artists and designers such as Alexander Calder, Piet Mondrian, George Nelson, Armin Hoffman, and Gerrit Rietveld:

Moodboard, ©Jodi Vautrin (if you Pin it, credit it. Thanks!

While most people think that designers such as Corbusier were anti-color in their work, adhering stringently to white in their buildings, they actually did use color in new ways. White was significant in allowing the geometry of their work to take precedence. However, with the influence from Dutch modern architects participating in the de Stijl ("The Style") movement, color was introduced into architectural space to emphasize planes and iterate the composition. Rather than paint the whole room in a form of decoration, color was applied as a design mechanism that emphasized the architecture. When beauty makes sense, even subliminally, it just feels right to me.

{ AFTER }

(still in progress: photo wall on red, new furniture and color accents, etc.)