I am in love with Marimekko

I am having a hard time deciding which Marimekko bedding I want to inspire my bedroom.

Help me decide and tell me your favorite. I could take any of them. Bright, bold, graphic...it's me!

When given the full range of the crayon box and permission to let go...I can do wild and fun. It's just happy.

I have two places I want to visit in New York: Marimekko concept store and the MOMA.

Book me a ticket!

Action Abstraction

I am loving the holidays and time spent with my family. My daughter Audrey (20 yr) is home from college. My son Alex (17 yr)has planned many of our family activities including a wonderful visit to the St. Louis Art Museum to see the special exhibit Action Abstraction. If you live in St. Louis you have until January 11 to see it. It's traveling around the country, so look for it in a city near you.

I love studies in color...and especially abstract art. I can't put in words what it means to me, but it elicits reactions in my soul like when I listen to inspiring music.

I was most moved by Grace Hartigan's work, her story and her art.

Like most women and blacks in the 50s, she had to fight hard for recognition of her work. Hartigan ran in circles of those better known Abstract Expressionists like Pollock and de Kooning. She broke through a glass ceiling in the art world as the only woman represented among 17 artists in the prestigious exhibit "New American Painting" sent by MOMA to Europe to communicate that New York had trumped Paris as the capital of modern art.

I am drawn to Hartigan's use of bold brush strokes and saturated splashes of color.

Bold, abstract, vivid and color infused...I can't get enough of it!

My favorite Hartigan painting is Summer Street (above). Can you make out the woman from the 50s shopping in the street? It took me a bit, but I found her. And do you see the watermelon? What else do you see in the busy summer street? What color and light of summer do you recognize? What time of day does it look like? Are there buildings around and if so, how are they recognized in the painting? Do you see yourself in a street like this?

I wish I could pluck Summer Street off the exhibit wall and place it in Heather's home! Perfect for her piano room (you'll see the reveal of Heather's piano room later on my blog). It would also look great in the 10th Street Lobby (also stay tuned for that reveal.)

I also loved New England in October (below).


Grace Hartigan quietly passed away in November this year. Though she faded from prominence years ago, I am grateful her work lives on in this exhibit.

Colleen Livingston Mitchell -- a STL favorite

Only two days left to catch Colleen Livingston Mitchell's photography exhibit. See it at the Soulard Coffee Garden -- 910 Geyer Ave. in Soulard, St. Louis, Missouri -- until July 15. You can have breakfast or lunch while also enjoying the exhibit on the two floors.

Colleen, a St. Louis (STL) favorite is also one of our design hoppers and brings her talented eye to our desighHop club get-togethers.

I enjoyed the opening reception for her exhibit on June 1st. Here are some of my favorites, though "my" photos do NOT do "her" photos justice...so I hope you will see her exhibit in person:


Colleen stands by her doors poster.


Colleen's photos -- above and below -- of Chihuly art exhibit at the Missouri Botanical Gardens.






A heavenly view of clouds.

Studies in Color -- Jerry O. Wilkerson

I can't think of a better Mother's Day. I spent it doing what I love with whom I love. My son and I went to the St. Louis University Museum of Art.

Studying color and sharing it with a loved one, how rich and wonderful!

We saw the Jerry O. Wilkerson Retrospective, Discerning Palette. I met the artist's widow, Gail Wilkerson, at the Art of City Living Tour. Gail told me that she has spent this last year managing the estate of her prolific artist husband who sadly passed away last June.

I was excited to see Gail strolling the exhibit today with her mother. Gail said she would be happy to answer my questions and I had tons.

I asked what drew Jerry to express his work in pointillism.

Her answer: "Jerry loved color and light."

Jerry enjoyed seeing what he could do with color, even tiny dots of color, applied to paper, board, canvas, fabric, quilts or sculpture to produce recognizable images of everyday ordinary things, like pears and pizza and reflecting iconic images of popular ure like Fig Newtons.

My son liked all the works, and one of his favorite was of a lemon and Kentucky Fried Chicken in the fridge. Color can be found anywhere, and Jerry O. Wilkerson found it in the refrigerator.

Gail remembers well Jerry's fascination with how fridge light illuminated the colorful items inside. He spent hours viewing the contents, taking photos and observing from different angles.

Now here is a lesson we can learn from the artist. If you are struggling to select a color palette or wall color for your room, have you considered studying color even in ordinary surroundings? Many might stop and study a dazzling sunset, but the fridge?

There is beauty to be seen anywhere there is color and light. And anywhere there is color and light, we can learn.

I love how artists present us with a new perspective. They encourage us to think and react to our surroundings in ways we never imagined.

So when I open the fridge this week, you bet I'll be noticing the color and light.

Learn more about the exhibit -- click here And if you live outside of St. Louis stay tuned, I will share Jerry O. Wilkerson exhibits that are heading your way.

Haven of Grace

My, time flies when you haven't blogged. There are several excuses and several projects taking my time.

Topping the list: Haven of Grace.

Haven of Grace is a special organization to help young homeless mothers and is championed by Editor, Christy Marshall of St. Louis Magazine AT HOME. She invited eight designers to decorate eight apartments for Haven of Grace.

I am lucky to be one of the designers working on the project. I am especially fortunate to have enlisted designer and friend, Gina Adolphson, to work with me. She has taken the lead in collecting fabrics and brainstorming the design.


This is not your typical project. Our inspiration is limited by what donations come in. So our color palette is not inspired by our favorite fabric on the bolt, but rather by what is given to us by kind retailers.


Gina made the rounds collecting miscellaneous items. We selected a few to create our palette.

We were given a fabric panel of leaves and fruits in an unusual mix of chartreuse, plum, slate blue, turquoise, burnt orange and bright orange and rosy reds. We decided to pull a palette of mostly blues and oranges from this piece for the living and dining rooms.


Gina told me today that she has enjoyed the challenge of creating a design around a fabric that was not of her choosing. "It has made me consider other possibilities with color I never imagined", she says. "I really love this palette."


Gina also loves the idea of a graphic bird mural painted above the dining nook. She picked birds just because she likes the shape of the template she was given. She doesn't know why, but it just appeals to her.

I like it too.


Please tell us how you've found design inspiration by something that was given to you.

See related blog: Take a Chance on that Sofa

Makeover - in St. Louis Magazine AT HOME

Katherine's Kitchen Before

Katherine's Kitchen After Makeover

My project to remake Katherine's Kitchen is featured this month in St. Louis Magazine AT HOME. Ten designers' projects were highlighted. You can read the stories online, or if you live in St. Louis, pick up a copy of the special "design issue" at your local grocery store or Walgreens.

I have copied the article about my project for your convenience:

Picture This: The Kitchen
Designer: Dana King, Dana’s Design Studio

It began with unpalatable pink ceramic tile and a problem picking out just the right color paint.

Now, Katherine Bish’s rejuvenated kitchen is like an alarm clock on the first day of school, ringing out reasons for her sleepy South County home to wake up from its 30-year nap.

Ms. Bish, a photographer whose work appears in several magazines including St. Louis Magazine and AT HOME, bought her home about a year ago. The kitchen was the first to be tackled.

On a limited budget, a wish and an unusual request for the designer, the project moved forward—ready or not.

“Katherine called me and said the painters were ready to go, but she had been called to Chicago on a shoot. She wanted me to pick out the paint colors for her kitchen,” says Dana King of Dana’s Design. “I had never picked colors when a homeowner wasn’t there, but Katherine said, ‘I trust you, I trust you,’ and I knew paint is always easy to fix.”

What inspired Ms. King was the very feature that troubled Ms. Bish. Decorative tile with a pink floral center covered the countertops and backsplash, and that pink definitely needed toning down.

“There was terra cotta and green in the tile, so I chose a khaki green color for the walls,” Ms. King says. “It almost made that pink in the tile read the same color as the terra cotta.”

Ms. King then brightened the dark wood cabinets and the wainscoting with a fresh coat of white paint—a project that demanded only a good primer and a steady hand. No sanding required.

A coat of leftover khaki paint and a bit of roughing on the edges gave an old dark wooden table a perfectly distressed look. Black chairs given to Ms. Bish were the final touch.

Ms. King framed a montage of Ms. Bish’s photos in $6 white frames and then hung them, as well as adding a funky red lamp that Ms. Bish discovered in an antique store some time ago.

An iridescent copper bowl was placed on the island, and a few more accents were added, bringing the entire project cost to $900.

I will blog more about Katherine's Kitchen. You can also learn more about the makeover in my previous post, click here.

World Market Screen Tranformed

Here is a great idea from Dose of Design. This World Market screen is budget-friendly and makes a great addition to almost any style room, but imagine how it can be transformed with paint.

Dose of Design used Photoshop to create the bright-colored versions below. These would be perfect for a contemporary or whimsical space.

What can you transform with paint?

HGTV Dream Home

I just took a home tour and so can you! Take it right now at your computer.

Click and see the HGTV dream home tour.

Starting in January you can enter to win the Dream Home Giveaway !



I especially liked the bold use of color and the artwork in the kitchen.

There are so many details to note. Don’t miss the videos with helpful hints.

Falling for Fall

Chris Toronto's entry in the Fall Colors competition.

I expect I am not the only one who believes the fall season is too short. Can’t that beautiful yellow tree outside my home just stay that way for a few more weeks?

We can enjoy the harvest hues of the season just a bit longer thanks to C2B and Apartment Therapy. They offer us inspiration for interiors inspired by fall. Check out the finalists from across the nation in their third annual Fall Colors contest.

They announce the winners today!

Hey, maybe I should enter my orange sherbert inspired room next year!

My Home - Inspired by the Freezer

Here is my husband, Dan. Now why is he pointing to the rainbow sherbet?

He wants our living room’s focal wall to be, you guessed it, orange sherbet.

Love that man!

Dan and I are soul mates when it comes to decorating our home.

I hesitate to divulge our style, because I don’t want you to think that “my” style will end up in “your” home, if you hire me to help you decorate. I just won’t do that, it’s your home.

We like any style that is well done. But we are drawn to contemporary styles that sing with clean-lines and vibrant colors. That is how we like to live: simple, clean and vibrant.

However, we also are purists. Our last home was a colonial style home. Well, what I call fake colonial, really. The façade, at least, was colonial, but the bones of the house were not. Regardless, it had a traditional feel, so the purists in us didn’t feel we could go as wild and modern as we would like.

We were driven by the desire to preserve the integrity of our home. And we felt the potential resale value would be greater if we kept our palette more subdued. So we leaned on the side of being practical.

But now we live in space with modern bones. And we are eager to follow our inner desires to go wild.

Orange, olive, brown and chartreuse wild!

We have lived with white walls for a year now, and I hope to paint at least one wall orange -- inspired by Dan -- before Thanksgiving. And more after that.

Dan found his inspiration in the freezer. Where have you found inspiration for your color palette?

Julie's Bedroom - Embracing White

White Paintings by Robert Rauschenberg

I love color – it’s my passion and probably my specialty. For that reason, I am surprised I am learning to appreciate “white” more and more.

White is technically the absence of color, but it consists of all the colors on the visible spectrum. Ok, that blows my mind and I won’t even try to understand it.

I just know I like white, especially in combination with color.

I generally prefer to use it as an accent or in small amounts, unless we are going for a very contemporary style or some other deliberate style in which white in mass makes sense.

Typically, though, white, especially in mass on walls, is stark, cold and does little to warm up woods in furniture and flooring.

White can be depressing, particularly in winter or in a room with northern light that reads cool. I often say that paint companies need to give you a bottle of Prozac with each can of white paint.

White can, however, read fresh and clean and reflect light to make the room appear brighter. In the hot months of summer it can make you feel cool.

When white is combined with other colors, it can be grounding. It has the ability to set-off colors and make them pop. For this reason it is a popular choice for moldings.

How much white you use depends on the tone you want to set for the room.

Our goal in Julie’s bedroom is to use white to give the room a cottage-feel and to highlight the other colors in the room, especially her favorite periwinkle walls.

White samples from Behr and Valspar

I plowed through some 50 samples of white to consider for Julie’s room. Notice all the variations (above photo). It may be counterintuitive, but white is not straight forward. It needs to be selected as carefully as other colors for the room.

We quickly selected two that closely match Julie’s fabrics. Next we held the two choices up to her periwinkle walls. A winter white, appropriately named Polar Bear (Behr Paints at Home Depot) won-out over the other choice because it made the periwinkle sing.

Remember: strong color combinations should drive our choices rather than strong color preferences.

In other words, we make the best selections when we think in terms of how a particular color can complement other colors.

Designers think: “What is this color doing?” NOT: “what is my favorite color?”

In the case of Julie’s bedroom, holding the Polar Bear paint chip up to the wall broke the tie.

So hold those paint samples up to the other elements in your room, next to the floor, furnishings, fabrics and walls. You may love the sample in the store, but think less or more of it when you see it next to the other elements in the room.

And I am beginning to think more of white. Even considering painting “some” walls white in my home. We’ll see if it passes the Prozac-test!

Color First - becoming color confident

I was asked some years ago to teach a class on basic interior design. I focused on one aspect of design: color. Design does not get any more basic than in the use of color.

Why color first?

I tell people to select their color palette before their style. This is because very few people can plunk down a large sum of money at one time for furnishings of all one period or style. Most of us have a mix of furnishings inherited from grandma or found garage sales. Or our tastes have changed over the years and we have accumulated a variety of styles.

Color has the power to unite mixed-matched furnishings.

Photo Courtesy of Eric Roth

This room (above) has iron, wood and wicker furnishings. Walls, furnishings and fabrics in blues, greens and purples harmonize the look. Because the colors have similar attributes -they are cool colors and of the same value (intensity) and strength (saturation) - they bring continuity to the space.

Now imagine this room, same furnishings, but with white walls and mostly void of color. Would it have the same sense of continuity?

Or maybe continuity is not your goal? What color palette might you choose for this room and why?

We’ll continue to explore ways to harmonize our interiors by using color. Stay tuned for more on Color Confidence.

If you would like to book the popular Color Confidence class for your organization or neighborhood group, contact me at 314-652-1759.

Color, It's Personal - becoming color confident

Graphic designed by Angela Robinson (http://www.angelwingsdesign.com/) for Dana's Design Studio

I am launching yet another series: Color Confidence.

Nine out of ten calls for my services the person asks, “Can you help me select paint color for my walls?”

Color is the single most important design tool. Yet, most people lack the confidence to use it.

The Color Confidence series will draw upon my popular class by the same name. My hope is that the principles and hints and tips I share will make you brave enough to dip that brush into a can of paint and on to your white walls.

Color Confidence - defined - is knowing what colors you love and how to harmonize them.

Gaining Color Confidence is a lot like learning to ride a bike. You just have to experience it, fall a few times and get up again. Before you know it, selecting color will become intuitive.

To help you on your way, I will give you principles, hints and tips you can lean on - just as a person learning to ride a bike leans on someone to help balance until they gain confidence to ride on their own.

But once you are off and riding I want you to gain confidence to break the rules and experiment to find your own way.

This leads to the first principle:

1) Using Color is personal – it’s not a science.

It’s not what your neighbor likes, it’s what you like.

It’s not something you apply a formula to…it’s subjective, it’s creative, it’s art.

A woman in my class last week asked, “I heard a rule that every room should have a little red in it…is that true?”

Again, there is NO formula for choosing a color palette that appeals to YOU!

And here is my belief, or core value, that drives my thinking: We are creative beings capable of developing our own relationships to color and how it works in our lives.

Will we fall down in the process of building our relationship with color? Most likely.

I create a color palette for a room with a large degree of confidence. But I have developed that confidence after much experimentation – on my OWN home and art projects, thankfully for my clients! And each time I work with color I learn something new. I don’t think I will ever stop learning about color.

You can learn too. Lean on me as we develop your Color Confidence!

I offer my class - Color Confidence - to groups and organizations. Call me for more details: 314-652-1759

Katherine's Kitchen - a study in color and design

How do you bring a kitchen forward in time on a tight budget?

Paint it!

We did several things to bring Katherine's kitchen into the new century; paint was key to making the project affordable!

Before, Katherine's kitchen had dated wallpaper and dark cabinets that seemed to close in the room. Her breakfast nook (pictured below) had a dark wooden shelf that ran around the top of the room, making the ceiling feel as if it was coming down on you.

Photo courtesy of Katherine Bish Photography

Look at the difference now (pictured below) with the shelf removed and the ceiling and woodwork painted a crisp white and the walls painted a rich terracotta.

Photo courtesy of Katherine Bish photography

Stay tuned to watch the transformation of Katherine's kitchen.

Julie's Bedroom - a study in color and design

I am helping Julie redecorate her master and guest bedrooms. In the master we are using Julie’s favorite color, periwinkle (a blue that leans purple), as the main color with accents in yellow and green. Our inspiration: the quilt Julie is making.

Now have you tried to find periwinkle in fabric lately? It’s a challenge. Most of what you find in affordable fabrics is grey-toned or muddy colors. For uncommon color palettes, especially bright or vibrant palettes – with the exception of children’s prints - you do best to search among designer fabrics. But they come, often, with a high price tag.

I have been a fan for years of pure and vibrant color palette of Designers Guild’s fabrics and home furnishings, designed by Tracia Guild, the United Kingdom’s master colorist. Stumbling on her books years ago inpired my serious education in color - she opened a whole new world of exploration for me.

For those on a budget, you might need to use her fabrics sparingly as they are priced on the high-end. Designer Guild fabrics are not found at retail stores, but most often only through designers or trade-only showrooms. However, if you are on the hunt for sophisticated pure and vibrant colors, they may be worth the look.

More accessible and affordable is the offering by Susan Sargent. And if you buy from housefabric.com they range from $12.95 to 16.95 a yard. This is a bargain price for designer fabric. (To see Susan Sargent fabrics in St. Louis, Missouri, check out Anatol's Fabric Outlet - home to housefabric.com -314-968-0090).

And guess what? Susan Sargent offers a delicious menu of "blues" that lean towards Julie’s favorite "periwinkle". I selected swatches (like the one pictured) that I think will make winning window treatments and pillows. Yummy!

I’ll let you know what Julie decides and show you the results! Stay tuned for more on Julie's bedroom.