You know how, when you learn a new vocabulary word, suddenly you start hearing it everywhere?
Well, that’s what’s happening to me with the color gray.
Gray’s been “in” for, what, a good 9 months now? And I’ve been recommending certain favorite grays, such as Benjamin Moore’s HC-172 Revere Pewter and HC-173 Edgecomb Gray, for years. But gray really has been on my mind since Elizabeth Mayhew’s recent article, 7 Shades of Gray, in The Washington Post.
So imagine my delight when my husband and I stumbled into Henlopen City Oyster House in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, earlier this week. Let me set the scene. After a cloudy (gray) day at the beach and a few hours of migraine-inducing frivolity at a throwback carnival-like place called — what else? — “Funland,” my parents surprised us by offering to take our daughters up to Philadelphia for their final days of summer vacation.
“Honey, I didn’t realize the girls don’t have camp this week. Would you like us to – ”
“Yes.”
“- to take them up to -”
“Yes.”
” – up to Philadelphia for a few -”
“Yes. Yes! YES!”
I felt like Molly Bloom. Anyway, once we packed the children into my parents’ station wagon and finished jumping up and down with glee, we realized that we were hungry. And that we also possibly needed a drink.
This is where gray comes in. We’d walked past Henlopen City Oyster House just moments earlier, where, at 2:59 in the afternoon, there was a crowd of people waiting for it to open at 3. A good sign. So in we went and were greeted with the most soothing, natural palette of cream, beige, and, yes, Gentle Readers, gray.
Warm gray on the walls, lighter warm beigey-gray on the concrete countertops,
gray paint unevenly applied to rough wooden planks on the bar fronts,
and super warm honey colored wood floors. Just lovely.
All in all, a color palette like the oysters themselves, wouldn’t you say?
Annie Elliott – aka bossy color – is an interior decorator and design blogger in Washington, D.C. She has been quoted in publications from The Washington Post to The New York Times to Real Simple and is considered an expert on color, residential space planning, and telling people what to do in the nicest way possible.