A Designer's Point of View
Margaret Ayers uses subtle color to set historic homes aglow.
Give Your Home Ageless Appeal
As a designer with almost 40 years in the business, Ayers has worked on numerous contemporary spaces around the East Coast, yet period houses have always exerted the strongest pull.
Ayers uses her knowledge of antiques, expertise with color, and a love of classic architecture to bring old homes resplendently to life. She honed this talent to perfection starting with her own Greek Revival home in upstate New York.
There's something about the clean, classical proportions of Greek Revival architecture that speaks to Margaret Ayers. "I think it's the relationship of width to height," she says. "It goes back to Palladian architecture, borrowing from the Greeks. It's very symmetrical, with an internal order I find appealing."
Ayers enhances this architecture through the thoughtful use of color to unify a space stating, "I don't want to chop up the space by having a hall in one shade, a stairway in another, and an adjacent room in yet a third color. I try to pick a shade for
the hall, and then use related colors, particularly if the rooms open onto one another."
That philosophy keeps an Ayers interior feeling coherent, unified, and serene. Trim is often kept to a single shade of warm white, tying together diverse spaces.
The color scheme is usually drawn from historic shades, although her many years of experience have left her confident enough to deviate from what some might consider a strict period palette. "I don't use anything anachronistic when I'm working on a period house, but I don't think you have to be rigid, either," Ayers asserts.
Ayers pays regular visits to New York's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, a rich source of information on historic interiors and domestic architecture, to research historic colors. But she then adapts the colors to accommodate the light in any specific room.
In her own home, for example, the living room is flooded with light from the large windows facing north, west, and south. Such a luminous space could hold up to strong color, so Ayers bathed the walls in a rich, rosy pink.
In other areas of a home, particularly the public living and dining spaces, Ayers tends to use color as a foil for furnishings. "I often design with antiques, so I don't want colors that are competing with the furniture and paintings," she admits. "I use light, warm shades that work with wood tones and complement the art."
Her tricks of the trade include a signature look for the window mullions in Greek Revival houses. She paints them black.
"That's a historic reference, because the original owners of those homes wanted the windows to look as though they were made of metal, so they painted them black," Ayers says.
Ayers also has a favorite white she often resorts to: Ivory White 925. She feels it is "very warm, but not a cream, and all colors go fabulously with it."
What is a common color mistake Margaret Ayers runs into? Homeowners who think they can skip the "test-run" stage of painting.
Ayers emphasizes the importance of this asserting, "Someone wants a peach-colored room, so they pick a paint that looks great on the chip—but when it's on the walls and reflecting on itself, it becomes too electric. Always paint a test patch!"
Margaret Ayers can be contacted at:
Margaret C. Ayers Interior Design
390 Riverside Drive
New York, NY 10025
E-mail: mcarscf@aol.com
Phone: 518-851-6060
Margaret Ayer's work is currently showcased in the book "Interior Style: How to Use Color Throughout your Home." You can pick up a copy at your local Benjamin Moore retailer, or order online
|
USA
-> For Architects and Designers
-> Personal Colour Viewer
-> Paint Style -- Get on Board
-> A Designer's Point of View
