Colors are inanimate. They do not have personalities or traits thereof.

A recent article came across my desk concerning the stress and anxiety experienced by some people when selecting colors for their living spaces.

Is it the best, most beautiful, and most appropriate color for this time and place?

What is the ambiance and psychological effect of this color, and how will other people react to it?

What determines our color choices?

Every appropriate, ambiance, psychological reaction, aesthetic, and every other trait and characteristic people attribute to any color is determined by their culture.

This culture includes their country, location, time, intelligence, education, exposure, history, personality, and everything else they have experienced.

There are no cut-and-dry, carved-in-stone universality positions of traits and characteristics people attribute to colors.

Be bold. Be brave. Don’t be a sheep following the herd, an insecure person, or a not confident self who submits to others above self.

Select those colors that you like and that align with your personality and purposes.

How did, or do, you select colors for your personal spaces.

Food for thought.

Awareness of the subtle enhances daily living.

As seasonings added to food makes it more enjoyable, appreciation of little things makes daily living more enjoyable.

Experiencing the subtle takes life from ordinary to extraordinary.

Living rather than merely existing.

Looking helps find.

If you think a small thing can’t make a difference, try living in a room with one mosquito.

Your choices determine your living.

What subtleties are you experiencing where you live?

Food for thought.

Behaviorist state that within seconds of people first seeing another person, the atoms in their brain determine their reaction to that person.

It has also been stated that our body language, grooming, clothing, and speech, as seen by others, mirror our inner self-being.

The ambiance and environment of our living spaces show our personality and lifestyle.

How do you want others to react when first viewing your residential living spaces?

What is the look that you display to the world?

What is the importance of such to you?

What do you choose to do, or not do, about it?

Food for thought.

Realtors reveal what will sell and what hinders selling in the current housing landscape.

Building contractors divulge what’s wanted, or not wanted, in new home construction industries.

There are many views, pro and con, about the merits and long-term effects of current residential trends.

Financiers inform us about current housing prices, inflation, and markets.

Much is mentioned about current home buying relating to the American dream.

Interior designers state what they would, or not, do for residences today.

Surprise!

Not all of these people are on the same page or wave length.

How should one, not in this field, react to this flood of information in the common domain?

Don’t.

Think. Plan. Cull.

Think who you are, where you are, what you have, and where you want to go.

Plan your needs, desires, requirements, time frames, and employable means to reach them.

Cull and eliminate anything encountered that will not advance desired results.

Use intelligence, experience, and education, to create your own pathway and

not evolve into sheep following crowds.

Appropriate wisely between emotions and intelligence.

Food for thought.

Recent articles have come across my desk concerning “good taste” for current residential interior design.

When major changes in businesses enabled the lower classes to improve their finances, education, and achievements, best society set the credentials by which the world recognizes its chosen members.

What role should these credentials play in personality manifestation for today’s residential interior design?

What are the elements of the complete highest quality level for contemporary residential interior design?

Times change. Cultures change.

What are the best choices for an excellent life today?

Are these credentials of merit, or are they just mental classifications?

Do the standards for formal table settings of the past have relevance for dining habits of today?

Food for thought.

Many circumstantial factors evolved into humanity wearing body coverings.

Other purposes appeared beyond the basics.

Personality began to be a factor in clothes.

Current culture sees, evaluates, judges, and classifies you according to what you wear.

A parallel is made by the circumstances and choices in our personal living spaces.

Is your home manifesting your true self to the world?

How do you feel about the situation?

Food for thought.

Since the beginning of building enclosures for human habitation, most forms that have come into being have been variations of the rectangle.

We live primarily in boxes.

This form has come to be the best for many reasons.

Over ninety percent of what we see are the walls, floors, and ceilings of this rectangle.

Various openings, primarily for functions and light, are put into this box.

To achieve the highest levels of aesthetics, two aspects should be addressed.

What is the optimum design of the relationship between the space and the outside world?

What is the optimum design of the box itself and the surrounding spaces?

Ideally, the expenditure of design resources should be expended somewhat equally for the walls, floors, ceilings, and furnishings of the space.

Most of us do not live in an ideal world and have to make choices accordingly.

Living in the real world, what aspects are considered for the complete aesthetic and personal expression of the spaces in which you live?

Food for thought.

Throughout history, status within groups covered a wide range of expressions. Within some groups, it is manifest as a positive activity mating ritual.

Throughout much of human civilization, it has been evaluated as an indication of one’s merit.

Much of contemporary society views it as a billboard to the world of one’s economic status, societal standing, abilities, accomplishments, and validity.

What role, and why, does such behavior play in the overall scheme of life?

Why do we need to show, or prove, ourselves to the outside world?

What do our residential environmental choices say about such?

What is the golden standard for residential interior design?

Is it a complete, functional, and aesthetically pleasing manifestation of its user’s personality and lifestyles expressing the time and place of its creation?

Or, is it designed to display how one wants to be known to the world?

What part does status play in where and how you live?

Food for thought.

Being considered successful by most standards, at that time, a person with whom I came into contact during my early years of practicing this profession, exuberantly manifested these traits.

He, in his ivory tower, always considered himself, in his lifestyle, uniquely superior to others while ignoring his limited academic education for this profession.

“There are none so blind as those who will not see.”

For many, in this and other occupations, success is measured by how well you can “sell” profitably.

The quality and level of aesthetics are not determining or completing factors.

Arrogance, ego, and snobbery, in and of themselves, in no way affect aesthetic manifestations.

They are solely chosen personality traits.

Yet, such is how many, in this and many other professions, practice their craft.

The highest level of beauty is the mark by which residential interior design is evaluated.

Have you encountered such in your lifetime?

Are you guilty?

Food for thought.

P.S. Have you ever wondered why people behave that way?

Physical has five traits, characteristics, or descriptions. Line, form, mass, color, and texture.

Light, reflecting from surface is color, is the most important one as it determines what we see.

Mass is size. The sizes of physicals, in relation to each other, determine proportions.

Proportions can most easily be described, or analyzed, as a pleasing balance for aesthetics.

All parts must be balanced equally for the highest level of aesthetic pleasure.

This principle is not adhered to in much of residential design and construction because of unawareness or other factors given a higher priority.

If you consider yourself serious about the beauty of your residential environment, inside and outside, you must adhere to the priority importance of proportions.

Look around. What do you see? How do you react? How does it make you feel?

What is the status, or role, of proportions where you live?

Food for thought.