Decorating with Brown

As I wrote last spring, setting up a new household is an opportunity to learn by revisiting, which often leads to relearning, what you know. In those columns, I was referring to setting up a kitchen for our home in Los Angeles, but the lesson has applied to the journey of setting up housekeepingin Los Angeles while maintaining our home in New York City. The journey is literal as we travel between the two locales, and it is a journey of learning, as we navigate maintaining a life together when so often apart.

It's a slight digression, but a few words are in order about how John and I have come to be bicoastal. Readers may recall that two years ago, John and I took our first vacation in over a decade. We decided to go to Los Angeles, which John had visited once and always wanted to see more of, and about which I had always been curious. My path took me east and ultimately to New York City rather than west and ultimately to San Francisco or Los Angeles, but as a young man growingup in the west, it was more common to dream about seeking one's fortunes on the west coast than the east. I could just as easily have found my way to the Pacific Ocean as to the Atlantic. A part of me had always been drawn to LA, just as had been a great aunt who went to Hollywood during the silent film era to seek success in the movies.

Not unlike a lot of New Yorkers, John and I had always assumed that, having established ourselves in New York City, we would stay here, or at least I had. I hadn't known to take into consideration that John may one day want to try living somewhere different. Nor could I have guessed that within a month of returning from that first California vacation, I would be diagnosed with cancer. What I wrote in one of the subsequent columns about cancer was true: the experience of cancer changes your perspective. You become a little bit less constrained by whatever constrained you before. I have encountered this time and time again in conversations with fellow cancer survivors both online and in person. Tellingly, one of the most recent such occurred on the sidewalk outside of a beloved bar in our new home town, where a guy we had been trading shots of Jagermeister with inside spoke frankly about his own cancer experience. I won't betray his confidence by revealing the details but I will say that some people react to cancer by withdrawing into a cocoon and some react by expanding their horizons. This fellow survivor has chosen to take the latter path, as I have also tried to do. For me, that meant dealing with a diagnosis, treatment and cure that ultimately put me in the bracket for gratitude. And, despite my own misgivings about the breadth of the change, it meant finding a way to support a husband who needed to trade tall buildings for palm trees and autumn leaves and winter snow for endless summer. Thus I found myself experiencing a period of travel between the coasts and significant periods of time apart alternating with periods of togetherness, with all of this happening during the year we were finally able to get married.

What does this have to do with the annual decorating column? A lot, actually, for the best expressions of home design are anchored by context but also transcend it. The quality of a home is informed by many landscapes, from the topography outside to the emotional territory within, sometimes deeply so. We've all visited discordant homes that we can hardly wait to get out of, and we've all visited harmonious ones we didn't want to leave. I believe that attaining that latter quality is a true hallmark of the best home design. Everything else -- from the details that went into the design to the effort that maintains it as it matures and, inevitably, changes -- proceeds from and travels towards the livability of the space. Livability is contextual. One chooses one's locale or it is chosen for one, and entire communities emerge in the macro from the homesteads that are the micro. This is true everywhere from gated communities to apartment houses, from the tiniest villages to the most densely populated neighborhoods, and it has been true since we first started seeking shelter in caves.

When you design a living space, you are designing the practical and aesthetic details of that space as a means of creating a place for the living that will happen there. Truly fluent design not only takes spatial concerns into consideration but finds a way to inhabit them, exploit them, even comment upon them. In New York City, rooms are compact and we live stacked on top of each other: design proceeds from that. New York City design can be edgy and industrial, taking its cues from graffittied walls and construction materials; sophisticated and monied, taking its cues from knickerbocker riches and deco skyscrapers; or surprisingly homey and welcoming, taking its cue from brownstones, row houses and the families that settle into them and accumulate history and culture.

In southern California, space is one thing that is not typically at a premium, and just as the New York City designer executes a space with an eye towards maximizing every inch of it, SoCal designers typically exploit spaciousness as an embarrassment of riches. This agrees with the southern California aesthetic of living that is about ease, enjoyment, sweep and vista; all of which are about the expansiveness that exemplifies California's place as the culmination of westward ho. Los Angeles design can be retro and charming, taking its cues from movie colony bungalows and art-directed make-believe; luxurious and stagey, taking its cues from glamorous decadence and conspicuous consumption; or open and welcoming, taking its cues from sand and ocean and palms and redwoods and sunshine.

We have lived in our New York City urban home long enough that its design has evolved significantly, a process I've shared in these September decorating columns that have become a cornerstone feature at Urban Home. As a designer, I prefer evolution to disruption; an editing and refining eye to big makeover muscle. I find it most satisfying to look deeper into the design in order to see more of what was there all along or could be there moving forward. This agrees with the work of design to begin with, and it is the most responsive approach to the lives that will be lived in the environment. Constancy through change is not just a philosophy of design; one could argue that it is the very definition of home.

Our New York City urban home is inspired by the proportions of the rooms the silhouettes inhabit, by our interests and personalities, by our history including that part of it that has yet to happen, by the city itself. The palette is reflective of those great New England glories of autumn and winter. The colors are rich with spice and lush with autumn leaves but braced with a touch of winter snow and evergreen. In the bedroom, coffeehouse colors create a room that is embracing but warm, while the parchment and ink color scheme in the office was inspired by paper and print. The kitchen and dining area are decorated in the orange and black of Halloween with complimentary colors of honey and gold to coddle a night of fright with autumn coziness in reference to the sacred rite of the dumb supper. In the living room, spicy paprika and golden cognac create a relaxed, welcoming lounge atmosphere. In the bathroom, desert tones of sand and sunset create an oasis for relaxing in the tub or a spa for one's daily ablutions.

Our Los Angeles urban home, which is a work in progress, is reflective of both the pacific landscape and of traveling to it. Simple, clean pieces, pared down to resort luxury, evoke SoCal casualness. The color scheme is oat, toast, loam and sand, highlit by the cream of breakers and the turquoise of Pacific waters. John and I both love nature, and appropriate to the natural living vibe of southern California, this home contains both the texture of polished woodgrain and clean cotton and the symbolism of birds taking flight but returning to the nest. Accessories are patterned after shore birds – seagulls, storks, herons, with room in the flock for the occasional Runyon Canyon raven or Hollywood peacock – and, if your dream of travel is floating rather than flying, sea glass. Back in the air, key pieces from John’s airplane collection are highlit on airy glass shelves. Back on land, the destination itself is honored in both the collection of film posters that lines the wall and in the wine rack that symbolizes California living while housing one of its cornerstone elements.

A constant that runs through both of these urban homes is decorating with brown. Brown is rich, the color of coffee and cocoa, of cinnamon and clove. Brown is earthy, the color of fur and feather, of wood and dirt. Brown is chic, the color of tortoiseshell and leather, of amber and topaz. Brown is anchoring; unparalleled in its ability to set the stage for other tones and shades. Brown is the ultimate neutral, creating a backdrop which both grounds the space and allows other elements to shine in it. Brown has an unequaled capacity to set atmosphere and then to take on the qualities of the atmosphere it sets.

This is important because, while brown is a fundamental color in a decorator’s repertoire, it must be brightened, lightened or leveled with a complimentary or contrasting color or tone or it becomes oppressive. Blue, green and black are favorite partners of brown, but almost every color harmonizes with this hospitable neutral. But that doesn’t mean that brown is drab. Brown is a showstopper in its own right. How could anyone argue about the umber bark of an oak tree, the chestnut hide of a stallion, a sulphur pour of molasses, a bronze shot of whiskey, or the prismatic gaze of hazel eyes?

As sand to surf, brown provides constancy through variance. Brown is the unifying element between our homes that corresponds to the unifying element of the lives being lived in them – sometimes together, sometimes apart. Brown is the toffee patchwork of hilltops as the plane ascends over the middle Atlantic, the waving heads of wheat as we fly over the midwest, the hennaed striations of the Grand Canyon as we angle southwest and, as we nibble the last of our airplane chocolate, we settle in for the home stretch, knowing we are getting close to home.

Most homekeepers understand that home design evolves as a simple matter of usage. Authoritative design creates environments that are true to the evolving circumstances of the lives being lived in the rooms. One calibrates to circumstances, for example budget, but the best environments are flexible and reflective, adaptable but steadfast. When aesthetic, as an applied practice, carries its message not just across rooms but across properties or even a continent, then the power of design is manifest. As with any healthy marriage, the fundamental pairing of inspiration and execution didn't really change. Though design evolves, it does so primarily by becoming truer. Brown is the truest of tones, the richest of spectrums, and the color that always brings us home.