Home Color Ideas

Woman-Centric Matters is the brainchild of Design Basics, the largest home plan design firm in America and a leading expert in marketing to women. In addition to home plans and marketing, we also publish Her Home magazine, which gives a wealth of helpful information about all-things home-related. So in addition to sharing facts and figures about the economic power of women and companies that "get it", I thought I would use this blog to share home tips with you. Let me know what you think!

Defining living areas in today’s open floor plans can be quite a challenge. Do you paint each area a different color, or opt for one color fits all? Josette Buisson, artistic director with Pittsburgh Paints says, “The law is that everything has to have a link and a flow.” Buisson continues, “There’s a main color and then lighter shades.” She advocates the 60:30:10 rule. Use 60 percent of one color, 30 percent of another and 10 percent of an accent color.

Jessica Gordon, color specialist and owner of Interior Artistry in Seattle, suggests choosing one color for the most public spaces and altering the shades in adjacent areas. “Keep the hallways and stairs one shade,” she says. “And only totally change color if you have good cut-off points like a soffit or a door between the living and dining rooms.”

Buisson likes to pick up the accent color (the 10 percent) and repeat it in an adjacent area. “If the living room has an accent color and you can see the kitchen from there, you might paint the entire kitchen in that color.”

Bigger Bucks Buy Bigger Homes

According to a new report by The Media Audit, there are 23.2 million adults with annual household incomes of $100,000 or more in the 87 metropolitan markets surveyed regularly by The Media Audit. Out of those 23.2 million, 6.2 million are between the ages of 18 and 34.

Interestingly, though the big focus right now is to market to the affluent Baby Boom generation, the study shows that there are more, by both percent and actual number, adults with six figure incomes under the age of 35 than there are over the age of 54.

These are some of the results of their findings about that group of people:

Out of those 6.2 million between the ages of 18 and 34, 60.9 percent are men and 39.1 percent are women.

But in spite of the fact that only 39.1 percent of this group are women, 80.7 percent of the women in this group own their own home, compared with only 74.3 percent of men.

They’re not necessarily small *starter* homes, either. Over 46 percent of women in the group have homes valued at $300,000 or more, versus only 42.2 percent of men in the group having homes valued that high.

To read more of the results from this study, go to: http://www.centerformediaresearch.com/cfmr_brief.cfm?fnl=070301