Welcome interior designer Tobi Fairley, whose expert tips on paint and color will be a mainstay on the At Home blog from now on! Each month, Tobi will be stopping by to help tackle our readers’ biggest color challenges. Given Tobi’s vast experience and reputation for bold patterns and paint, we can’t wait to see the solutions she provides and color combos she suggests.

Q:

Dear Tobi,

Everything in my house seems to be some boring shade of brown. It’s not so bad with my Christmas décor around to spruce things up. But when I take them down in a few weeks my house will definitely go from fab to drab! What colors can I bring in to liven things up a bit for the new year? Help!!!

Brooke from Little Rock

A:

Brooke,

Thanks for writing to Color Confidential! I am so glad to be writing this new column for the At Home in Arkansas blog. There are quite a ways you can “jazz up” all that brown in your home. Here’s my advice:

I designed the room above with brown walls accented by coral. The chairs, rug and accessories are what make this room! When done like this, the brown isn’t boring! This home was featured in At Home in Arkansas in August 2010 and can be found here.

Here are the colors I used:

Walls: Sherwin-Williams SW6069 French Roast

Trim: Sherwin-Williams SW7012 Creamy

Adjoining Foyer: Sherwin-Williams SW6607 Red Tomato

Maybe red isn’t the way you want to go. Here are a few more options of pairing vivid colors with brown:

Yellow:

Sherwin-Williams SW6068 Brevity Brown

Sherwin-Williams SW6063 Nice White

Sherwin Williams SW6683 Bee

Turquoise:

Sherwin-Williams SW6081 Down Home

Sherwin-Williams SW6147 Panda White

Sherwin-Williams SW6472 Composed

Lavender:

Sherwin-Williams SW6083 Sable

Sherwin-Williams SW6553 Heavenly White

Sherwin-Williams SW6555 Enchant

Orange:

Sherwin-Williams SW6082 Cobble Brown

Sherwin-Williams SW7102 White Flour

Sherwin-Williams SW6641 Outgoing Orange

Now let’s take a look at pulling together a room adding accents of color. Imagining that we are starting with the brown room with yellow accents pictured in the example above, I’ve come up with the following:

Clockwise from top left: Sherwin-Williams paints as mentioned previously, Atlas Pillows in Chocolate from Tobi Fairley Home, Capri Gourd Lamp in Yellow from Jonathan Adler, Chauncey in Buttercup Fabric by Highland Court, Sunflower Ticking Woven Cotton Rug by Dash & Albert and available through Cobblestone & Vine.

I hope this gets you well on your way, Brooke, to adding some inspiring color accents to your home. As you can see, brown isn’t that bad after all!

Happy Decorating!

Tobi