Thanks for bearing with me, Gentle Readers. Here is my final observation about Colonial Williamsburg. And then I promise to go on vacation somewhere else.
As an interior designer, I spend a lot of time thinking how I can achieve flow within a house. How can I make each room a little different while maintaining a cohesive feel?
It helps if the style — or mix of styles — is consistent. And color is an obvious strategy for flow: if I’m working with a palette of, say, three main colors, I might emphasize one color in one room, pull out another in a different room, and establish a neutral backdrop and use tiny amounts of all of the colors in another room.
But those upstart colonialists: they didn’t care about flow! The fancy people didn’t anyway. They wanted to put up as much color and pattern as they could afford.
To wit: the George Wythe House. Dark red, blue and white, and electric green in a single eyeful. I love it.
Here’s a pink room looking into the same green one, still at Wythe House:
And here’s the view from the ballroom to the dining room in the Governor’s Palace (this picture is from Elle Decor). The only color consistent between these two rooms is a pinky-purple in both of the rugs. (And we don’t know for sure that these were the EXACT rugs used at the time — there may have been NO repeat colors across these rooms.)
So. NO connection between colors or patterns room to room at Colonial Williamsburg. Huh. It’s actually kind of liberating, isn’t it? (Pun totally intended.)
Bossy color is a full-service interior design firm in Washington, D.C. At bossy color, we design outrageously beautiful homes for fascinating people.