The solutions to your color problems are totally eliminated when you use The Color Bars. Indecision, Worry, Frustration, and Fear of making the wrong color choice is replaced with COLOR CONFIDENCE, because it’s impossible to make a color-matching mistake.

As you stroll through these stores your subconscious mind is storing the furnishings, paint colors, fabrics, lamps, and everything you’re seeing, and certainly whatever you’ve stopped to look at more closely. Our design taste is formed by what we see, and most especially by whatever we see the second time. As we’re visualizing these items in our homes we’re actually designing various rooms in which that rug, that lamp, and how that beautiful color we just saw would look in our own homes.

Home improvement stores house a wealth of beautiful and very practical furnishings for our homes.

My advice: Shop Home Improvement Stores!

Lauren and I knew this was happening and thus, our Elaine Ryan® Home Decorating Kit – Transform Your Home From Nice to Knockout! was born. With our KIT, becoming your own interior designer and color expert, and saving thousands of dollars by designing your own home is happening everyday by every user of the KIT.

Even expert interior designers are using the Elaine Ryan® Color Bars to quickly and easily select and combine colors for interiors.

To All Our Fans—-thanks a zillion for your emails telling us how much you love the KIT. Keep your questions coming! As you know, I personally answer them all by giving you my interior design solutions to any problems you have in any room of your home and office.

And we’re thrilled that the sales of our Kit increase every day! We know from your emails that you’ve loved learning how to design your home by yourself, and we accept with gratitude what we keep hearing from you: That you consider that the Elaine Ryan® Home Decorating Kit an investment that keeps on giving!!

Think about it for a moment. Your bedroom is the only room in your home where you dress differently than you dress for your kitchen, dining or family room; where you wear sheer nightgowns, pajamas—-or nothing at all!! So, doesn’t it stand to reason that your bedroom should have a special look and feel—-a sensuous look and feel??

A sensuous bedroom will suit all your practical needs—every convenience you enjoy in your bedroom now with one addition: it will meet all of your romantic expectations.

Since early in February the questions I’ve been asked on my website are overwhelmingly about bedrooms!! Is it that this verrry long, very cold winter brings with it thoughts of the beauty and warmth of the love we all want in our lives? And inevitably we think of our bed and our bedroom?? So, does feeling warm all over begin in our bedrooms?

Sandy in Michigan wrote to me that she woke up this morning and realized that the first thing she saw from her bed was her desk with bills she still had to pay, her computer with emails she still hadn’t answered, and an application she still needed to fill out for a credit card with 0% interest. She wrote, “Today is Sunday. Isn’t Sunday supposed to be the day when we rest? When do I get a day off from work? I know that I need help because I don’t know what I can do to make my bedroom a place where I can go to rest, read, just relax. Can you help?”

I responded to Sandy and told her that I can DEFINITELY help her! Although she doesn’t have a room she can designate for an office, the only way she can have the bedroom she wants for herself where she can “go to rest, read, just relax” is to remove her computer and all paper problems (bills to be paid, etc.) that need her attention, from her bedroom. Somewhere in her residence is a corner, a small enough space for a surface to be used for these work purposes. And it is not in her bedroom!

Sandy’s bedroom is, or should be, her personal haven and her sanctuary. Whether she’s sharing her bedroom or it’s only her own room, this is the place in her home where she should be able to restore herself to the Sandy that is now covered beneath layers of her daily responsibilities.

I told Sandy what I deeply believe is TRUTH; that when we acknowledge our need to nurture ourselves by giving to ourselves a serene and lovely space where we feel content to rest, read, and relax our bodies and minds, we are truly respecting ourselves!

Will giving such a gift to ourselves mean that we’ll be sacrificing our responsibilities to our families, to our jobs, to our children etc.? Actually, most of us probably know the answer to this question, because we already know that when we feel happy we naturally and easily pass our happy feelings on to those with whom we come in contact.

Let’s love ourselves so that we design our bedrooms to reflect the softer side of us. And let us leave the work we need to finish outside our bedrooms—until tomorrow!

With the Elaine Ryan Home Decorating Kit you are becoming your own interior designer and color expert, while saving thousands of dollars!  And, having the most fun doing it!

In this New Age of Interior Designing the Elaine Ryan Home Decorating Kit is enabling everyone to become their own interior designer and color expert!

We love these colors and we love the thought of how they’ll look in our homes, and how happy we’ll feel living with and being surrounded by these wondrous colors. 

Let’s begin with what I call Closet Clues to find the colors and style for your home:  With Closet Clues in mind, open your closet door and look at the colors of your all your clothes—and especially the colors of your more casual clothes.  Do you see one or two colors that predominate?  Identify them and you can be certain that the colors you wear on weekends and for casual outings are the colors you will love living with in your home.  Dress your home in your fashion colors on your walls, draperies, sofa, lounge chairs, etc.  You’ll feel happy living with your colors in your home!

Now look at the style of your casual clothes.  Do you see a predominance of jeans, button-down shirts, blazers, and straight pencil skirts?  Do your clothes have a tailored look?  Then this is a clue from your closet to you!  Your home will be very pleasing to you if you use the “less is more” principle.

Do your casual clothes have a fun and frivolous look?  Do you love blouses with ruffles rather than simply cut shirts?  Do you wear bracelets or bangles that look wonderful when you wear four to six of them rather than only one?  Then this is a clue from your closet to you!  Your home will be very pleasing to you if it has a casual and lighthearted style.

We can know for sure the key elements that we select in our homes are the style of our wardrobe and the colors we gravitate toward.

As a newspaper columnist, through the years I answered many questions my readers asked me about ways to bring that personal look to their homes – specifically their own look.  Also in my private design practice working with my clients, I know that there is only one way I can make that happen.  I tell every new client to tell me about himself or herself.  Before I begin designing their home for them I need to know more about them.  I ask them specific questions, and as he/she talks to me about themselves I know that they’re hearing themselves actually speak about what they often only think about.

This is how it works – when we hear ourselves speak about what we normally only think, more often than we realize, we become aware of what is missing in that area of our lives. Sudden self-awareness is a wondrous discovery!  A time for celebration!

I’ve always been very careful to have my client’s homes look like – reflect – my clients.  I’m aware that when I’m designing a client’s home, their home could wind up having my own personal stamp on it, or looking a lot like my own home. Therefore, before I begin to design their homes I spend a lot of time learning about them. We talk about their lives, their spouses or partners, if they have children, their children’s ages, in which room they spend most of their waking time, which room they want to design or redesign, and etc., etc.  We talk a lot until I feel myself connecting with my new clients, and I know that I can begin working with them to design their home to reflect them.  Often I feel so connected to them that after I’ve finished designing my client’s homes we’re friends who see each other only because we like spending time together.

One of my favorite ways to go about the “getting-to-know-you” process is to ask my new client, “Think back for a moment, perhaps to a long time ago.  Can you remember what you wanted your home to look like?  Do you remember how you wanted it to feel when you opened the door and walked into your home?  I want you to dust off your dreams and tell me about your home as you visualized it a long time ago.”  And they do just that.  They reminisce about their dream home.  And together we create it.

At this time are you wondering how to even begin to design your home to “reflect you”?   And also being your own interior designer and color expert?  You can!  And you can do it very well.  So well, in fact, that when you walk into your home you’ll find yourself experiencing that delicious ‘Aaah Factor’ feeling that tells you, “I love walking into my home.  My home feels sooo goooood!”

The best and easiest way to begin designing your home so that it reflects you is to know your own fashion style and your own personal colors. Know this: Your fashion style is your interior home style!   And your fashion colors are your home colors!

It’s like this:  The fashion industry introduces new colors and then two years later the interior design industry picks up those same colors, and suddenly we see them in fabrics, paints, carpeting, wallcoverings, etc.  Fashion introduces new colors; interior design reflects these colors.

The colors that fashion designers select are visible expressions of the economic and social conditions of the world.  For example, during the deep unhappiness and anguish of war fashion designers turn to deeper, sober colors.  Khaki, the color of the military, is always popular during wartime periods.  In years when optimism runs high, fashion designers celebrate that mood by introducing bright, happy colors.  In difficult economic periods, they express the mood of the times with darker colors.

And the interior design industry follows them two years later!!

It was in the late 1930’s that this simple design of large rectangles and squares of bright colors was first seen in the in the paintings of Piet Mondrian, a Dutch painter. Everyone in the art world celebrated the “new art” of Mondrian a renowned artist whose work had evolved from classical realism to the Cubist Movement.  And thus was born color blocking!  It came directly from the Cubist style of painting, and Mondrian became the foremost champion of this simplest of designs; Bright tones of yellow, red, blue, and white on the painter’s canvas.  Utterly simple and yet nothing more than blocks of bright colors.  These paintings were EXCITING!

In the mid-sixties along came Yves St. Laurent, the brilliant French fashion designer who took Mondrian’s Cubist designs and interpreted them on wool jersey for what he called a “day dress”.  The bright white, yellow, red, and blue colors were separated by bands and blocks of black – and they were gorgeous!  Everyone wore a Mondrian-patterned dress, jacket, shoes, even a coat.  It seemed the sixties belonged to Mondrian’s color block designs.

Now here we are almost fifty years later and Mondrian’s color blocks have returned!  Today we’re talking about and reading about, and seeing apparel in this simplest of designs.  And they’re still so exciting!

Since interior design always follows fashion design, how can we interpret color blocking in our homes?  Easy!  And certainly as beautiful.  Here are ways you can incorporate bold blocks of color that will satisfy your color-blocking craving:

At the Windows:  Stationary drapery panels on either side of windows will be a dramatic focal point in a living room, family room, dining room, or bedroom.

Upholstered Furniture:  60” to 84” sofas upholstered in color-blocked design.  Small arm chairs with color blocked upholstery.

Accent and Accessory uses: 22-24” square sofa pillows, 32” square floor pillows.

Bedrooms:  Color blocked duvet covers over a down filled comforter, accompanied by pillow shams of the same color-blocked design.  In a bedroom, draperies of the same fabric – either stationary panels or draperies that can be drawn across the entire window.

Rugs:  Any rug size from 5’x7’, 6’x9’, 8’x10’, and even 9’x12’, with a color-blocked pattern will bring a joyful feel and look to the room.

So now we have the contemporary story of color blocking in our homes!!

Although most of us think that we kinda’ know this, sorta’ know that we’re moved by color and it does affect us, don’t we as a matter of fact overlook the importance of it in our lives?  It’s an understatement to say that color is far and away more important to us than we know, because when we feel overwhelmed by situations in our lives, by its very essence this natural element - color - that restores our spirits.

Living with the colors we love will certainly not solve our problems.  Yet color has an instant soothing effect upon us, and its gentle and life-affirming serenity gives us a sense of knowing that these now difficult times will pass.  In a very real way color speaks to us in a language all its own.

We know for sure that our homes are much more to us than shelter; where we eat and sleep.  In truth, our homes are where our hearts are, and more often than we realize, how we feel about our homes has a lot to do with how we think of ourselves.

We all carry with us remnants of our childhood – both good and bad.  Also, we know that when a time of life ends, very often we remain connected to it.  Our memories of that period we lived through keep us cleaved to our past.  And because we have a natural relationship with color, we’re often emotionally affected by colors that were present during certain pivotal times of our lives.

I call this emotional connection we have to certain colors, Color Memory.  Color and emotion are so completely intertwined that we can recall certain situations, good and bad, that happened many years ago – in color!  We intuitively know that we can trust that powerful emotional palette we carry in our hearts – our Color Memory.

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When we see a gorgeous, impossible to describe sunset, or enjoy the exquisitely beautiful colors of a garden in bloom, we’re realizing the joy of our spiritual connection to color.  And we’re experiencing the pleasure of life in living color.  The colors we love and love to live with truly color our lives.

Color in your home will lift your spirits.  Surrounding yourself with the colors you love will bring you much-needed and remarkable feelings of optimism.

Here’s how the The Supermarket Test works:  Take a trip to the produce counter of your local supermarket and you’ll discover the colors you will love living with—your own personal colors!  As you walk down the produce aisle looking at the fruits and vegetables grab one of every fruit and vegetable you like the color of.  Place each one into your cart, and when you arrive home put them all into the sink and run water over them.  The beautiful colors will leap out as the water hits them and you’ll find yourself responding with joy to certain fruits and vegetables.  Take those out of the sink and place them on a platter or a plate—preferably one that is white or without a pattern.

As you look at all of them you’ll find yourself mostly loving three or four, possibly five.  If you’ve chosen a bunch of green grapes, a pineapple, an avocado, a tomato, a red cabbage, place them on a surface and slice into these 3-5 fruits and vegetables.

What you’ll see is the beautiful water-green of the outside of the grapes and the gorgeous yellow of the inside of the pineapple.  The pineapple’s exterior skin is inedible, but the inside is delicious.  If the outer skin of a fruit or vegetable is inedible and we say that we love the taste of it, we’re really speaking about the inside. The truth is that we like a color of a fruit or vegetable because we like its taste.  The fact is this: If we don’t like the color of a food, we won’t eat it.

The Supermarket Test reveals to you the colors you love now and very likely have always loved.  You’ll never grow tired of living with the colors of the fruits and vegetables you chose – because they are Your Colors.

With the Elaine Ryan Home Decorating Kit you are becoming your own interior designer and color expert, while saving thousands of dollars!  And, having the most fun doing it!

In this New Age of Interior Designing the Elaine Ryan Home Decorating Kit is enabling everyone to become their own interior designer and color expert!

Think of this:  Do you know of anyone who decides that black will be a major color in their home?  If you just said ‘No’, you’re right.  Except for black leather sofas and chairs of mid-century modern design, the color black is ignored and almost banished from the greatest majority of homes.  Yet, black is an exciting color!  In my own home I’ve installed black granite countertops in my kitchen, and I look at my black countertops a lot because in addition to interior design and writing, cooking and entertaining family and friends is what I love to do.

I also installed black granite countertops over double sinks in two bathrooms in my home. And, the powder room near my front hall has a shiny black porcelain pedestal sink, a black porcelain toilet, and a small console table painted in black enamel.  The walls are painted a soft Victorian rose, and on the walls I hung 19^th century French prints with black frames.  Black is a major color in this small room—– and it’s beautiful!

In addition to patterned fabrics with black backgrounds, black lampshades are lovely with lamp bases in any material: glass, brass, ceramic, porcelain, steel or iron.  Because black is a saturated and rich color it enhances every element in a home.

The fact is that we enjoy wearing our ‘little black dress’ and almost all of us has a favorite black purse, and at least one pair of black shoes.  We dress ourselves happily in black, so then why not use this remarkable color in our homes?

Try it.  You’ll like it.

When you’re choosing the colors for your home Think Black!  You’ll be glad you did.  And, if you have any questions about black or anything pertaining to interior design please write to me.  I’ll be happy to answer your questions.

Lists are the most overlooked and easiest way to organize what needs to be accomplished at the beginning of a design project.  In this case two lists will do it.  One list is for furniture, accessories, and art: Like and Want to Keep.  The second list is for furniture you: Want to Buy.  Or, if you’re lucky, furniture you can acquire from a generous relative.

As you continue making your lists of ‘Like and Want to Keep’ and ‘Want to Buy’, your new room will come sharply into the focus of your minds eye.  You’ll find yourself visualizing your new room more distinctly, and seeing yourself in the room.  In your mind you’ll walk around this room and ‘see’ details it needs that will give it the look and feel you want it to have.

Lists are fun to do.  They’re our natural organizers!  I couldn’t be without them.

When a child’s room is created by him/her he gains confidence and validates his belief in himself.

Working together will give you a window into the mind of your child unlike any you’ve had before.  Helping your child to design his room can provide you with a unique opportunity to learn more about him/her.  His room will be a window through which you’ll see his thoughts and dreams.

By allowing your child to select his colors and furniture, you’ll work with him as his guide to creating the room he will love and his room will reflect him!  You and he will have experienced something unique and loving together that he will always treasure.

This morning I received a question from a reader.  I usually don’t have the time to immediately write an answer but I feel I have to answer this question now.

She writes that her twelve-year-old son wants to paint his room purple and black—he wants one wall to be a dark purple and the rest of the walls black—she says, “pitch black”.  He also wants the ceiling to be black.

She was surprised about his color choices and at first she laughed when he told her, but she saw that he was very serious.  He wanted purple and black, and no amount of talking to him about the fact that he might change his mind about having his room in these, as she said “scary colors”, did anything to budge his decision.  He wants purple and black.  She writes that he told her, “Mom, purple and black may be scary to you, but I want these colors in my room.  It’s my room and I like these colors.  They’re the best!”

She asks me what do I think about purple and black for a twelve-year-old boy’s room?  Do I think he’ll grow tired of these “terrible colors” and then want to repaint his room in other colors?  She reminds me that repainting the dark purple and black including the black ceiling will require at least two coats of paint.  And she tells me, “paint is very expensive these days”.

She asked him to wait until after spring break and then she’d give him her decision.  Spring break has come and gone and she needs to give him her decision.  Should she tell him that “there is no way he can have his room painted with black walls, one deep purple wall, and his ceiling pitch black also”?   Do I have any suggestions about how to handle this situation?

In a brief sentence I gave her my answer:  Give your son the purple and black room he wants.

I have worked with many children on the design of their bedrooms, and I’ve learned that there is no room in their home that is as important to them as their own bedroom.  I’ve also learned that one of the most important things you can do for your child is to allow him or her to create his own room beginning with the colors he chooses—-regardless of how offensive these colors may be to you.

Your decision to allow him to have the colors he wants for his room will be of great value to him because surrounded by these colors he will validate his belief in himself. Ultimately he’ll gain a deeper confidence in his own choices.

In the booklet, You and Your Child, I speak about the significance that children’s bedrooms have on their future development.  Few parents realize that a child’s room is his own world.

Yet, there is the reality that in a couple of years it’s very likely your twelve year old son may want to change the colors in his room.  Repainting will require purchasing more paint.  In fact a lot more paint given the two coats needed to cover the deep purple and black.

I suggest that before you agree to paint his room these colors you and he have a clear understanding that they are his color choices, and should he decide to change the colors, he will pay for the paint from his own money.  You are paying for the paint (and possibly the painting) now, and he will pay for any color change at a later date.  Tell him what the cost of the paint is that he’s chosen for his walls and ceiling.  And tell him that to repaint these colors will be double what it costs now because covering the colors he chose will require two coats of paint.  Just to be certain that there is no future misunderstanding between both you and your son, a written and signed agreement will be absolutely in order at such a time.

Having made this agreement with you, he’ll feel very good about having made his own decisions regarding the colors in his room. You’ll find that this difficult time will become a win-win situation for both of you.  He’ll think his mom is cool!

You’ll both benefit from this decision for many years to come—very likely, long after his black and purple room is a story you’ll both love telling and laughing about.

She said that although her former husband had moved out of the house more than two years ago, somehow as soon as she entered the bedroom they had shared she still felt him in the room.  She sensed him there.  I knew what she meant.

The fact is that when we’re healing emotionally we’re especially susceptible to what we sense, what we touch, and how we feel.  After even after the easiest divorce or the loss of any long-term relationship, we’re all in a healing mode and this time of healing can and often does continue for a longer period than we would wish it would.  During this time we need to be very kind to ourselves.  Therefore, anything we can do for ourselves to hasten our healing, we should do.

When I was designing her home I remember hearing her tell me several times that she’d always wanted to be an interior designer. Being an interior designer would be a dream come true for her. Whenever I showed her paint colors for a room, fabrics and furnishings for her home, or a way to reposition her existing furniture in a room, or a new drapery treatment for her windows, she was totally engaged in the process of the interior design.

Therefore, what could be more logical than for my client to have the Elaine Ryan Home Decorating Kit show her how to become her own interior designer and color expert?  Couldn’t this be a marvelous way for her to turn around what is now an emotionally dark time in her life, and instead make it a time in which she is fulfilling her long held dream to become an interior designer?     

Last week my former client (she now is her own interior designer) called me to tell me how happy she is with her bedroom.  It’s entirely her own style, her own colors, designed entirely for her, and by her. 

She told me that as she was working with the Home Decorating Kit she was astonished to realize that she was learning more than she had ever known there was to know about interior design. And she had more fun! 

The best part of it all, she said, is that as she was reading the Suddenly Single  chapter in the book Transform Your Home From Nice to Knockout! in the Home Decorating Kit, she felt a shift in her thinking.  She became aware that until now although legally divorced, she had remained emotionally attached to her husband. 

Working with the Kit, doing what she has always loved—learning how to become her own interior designer was emotionally healing for her. She  realizes, she told me, that she’s feeling a new sense of self-worth.

When she awakens in the morning to “the most beautiful bedroom a girl can have” and she sees that she had created her own personal sanctuary she feels happier than she has for many years.

My former client’s good news is heart-warming to me.