Flooring fun facts!

I spent the better part of this afternoon in a flooring showroom preselecting some options for a client. The focus of my excursion was a kitchen floor and I wanted to whittle down their options a bit to keep them from being overwhelmed when we go back together later on this week. The options can be staggering to the unitiated, so I like to get an idea of what I want them to see beforehand. We'd already discussed what they were looking for in pretty general terms, so I know the direction I want to head in.

We'd discussed using either natural stone tile or a porcelain tile that looks like natural stone. They are looking for something rustic but not country-fied and I'd suggested a French Pattern, and that's something they want to explore further.

Ceramic Tile: Ceramic floor tile is fired and glazed feldspar and clay. This material gets its surface color and texture from its glaze. Remember that.

Porcelain Tile: Porcelain tile is a kind of ceramic tile. Porcelain is porcelain because it contains the mineral kaolin in addition to feldspar and clay. Kaolin-containing clays are more dense and get fired at higher temperatures, this makes for a stronger tile. Porcelain tiles tend to derive their colors from the clays they're made from rather than glazes on the surface on the finished tile.

Stone Tile: Stone floor tile is usually made from travertine, limestone or marble. Occasionally, some other stones get carved up into flooring --most notably slate-- but for the most part, the big three listed above are it. A lot of times those three names are used interchangeably and erroneously. All three are very different though they are curiously related.

Geology time! All three kinds of stone are made from calcium carbonate and each of them starts with limestone. Limestone is formed at the bottom of bodies of water. Small creatures make their skeletons and shells from calcium carbonate that's dissolved in water. Think of a clamshell only on a much smaller scale. As these wee beasties die, they drift to the bottom of the sea and accumulate. Over millions of years these deposits of calcium carbonate turn to limestone. As the continents slide around some of those deposits get pushed to the surface and then we can turn those gazillion year-old wee beastie skeletons into flooring. Thanks wee-beasties!

BUT when that limestone gets pushed down toward the center of the earth instead of being pushed up, it undergoes a metamorphosis. The high pressure and high temperatures below the surface of the earth make the limestone turn into marble. Then, miraculously enough, that marble gets forced back to the surface. This twice-baked limestone then gets turned into a building material that curls my toes. I love marble so much it hurts sometimes.

Finally, if limestone ends up near the surface and is exposed to running water, the water will dissolve the calcium carbonate that makes up the limestone. When the water reaches a point of saturation and can't absorb any more calcium carbonate, the dissolved minerals precipitate out of the water and form deposits of calcite. These calcite deposits are what we call travertine.

Of those three tile categories; ceramic, porcelain and stone; I will always lean toward natural stone if the choice is left to me. Nothing looks like it and nothing feels like it. Natural stone has a warmth and a texture that the other two strive for but never quite achieve. However, the warmth and texture of natural stone comes at a price. It is softer than ceramic, significantly less so than porcelain. Because the natural stones I'm talking about are made from calcium carbonate, a water-soluble mineral, they are more prone to staining and wearing irregularly. I'm of the mind that these characteristics are pros rather than cons though. I like things that show the effects of normal life. A good travertine floor will never fall apart and if it's installed properly, it will never need to be replaced. I mean the Coliseum in Rome is made from travertine and it's been there for 2,000 years. So what if a floor made from the same material shows wear patterns by the door?

Bonus section: the French Pattern I mentioned at the start of this thing is a traditional pattern used in setting stone floor tiles. Nothing looks quite like it, and tile setters must hate it. I know they charge like they hate it when they're setting one of these patterned floors. Granted, the math gets a little complicated, but it is so worth it. Here's what the pattern looks like in a black and white drawing. In a typical application, size A is 16"x24", size B is 16"x16", size C is 8"x16" and size D is 8"x8". The diagram to the left is a single repeat and there are two As, four Bs, two Cs and four Ds. Those twelve sizes repeat in the pattern shown the whole way across the floor. In a chisled-edge travertine like the example shown above, the effect is as timeless as it is beautiful.

If you're in the market for a new tile floor, even if you don't end up with chisled-edge travertine in a stunning French Pattern, promise me one thing. Promise here and now that you won't set it in a straight forward grid. Life is too short for boring floors and it takes so little effort to do something interesting.

Turnin' up the heat: hot vs. cold colors

OK, back to color theory. The color wheel is split into two halves --warm colors and cool colors. This is not just another arbitrary grouping as it would seem at fist glance. When Isaac Newton held a prism up to the window and saw that sunlight split into seven discreet colors, he was onto something. Onto something more than introducing generations of school kids to Mr. Roy G. Biv that is.

He started a line of inquiry that resulted in what we now know as the colors of the spectrum. Different wavelengths of light result from different temperatures and yield the seven colors of the spectrum. The temperature of light is measured in a scale called degrees Kelvin. Red and yellow light burns hotter than green and blue light. These temperatures are why the colors red through yellow-green are said to be warm and the colors green through red-violet are said to be cool.

Sunlight, the picture on a TV, the halogen light I'm working under are examples of projected light. My black watch, green sweater and the taupe walls of my office are examples of reflected light. The color of projected light comes from wavelengths projected. The color of reflected light comes from the wavelengths that are absorbed and reflected back by an object. Projected and reflected light behave differently, but the language to describe them is essentially the same. In talking about wall paint, or carpet colors, upholstery colors or whatever; what we perceive as color is actually the wavelengths that are absorbed and bounced back by the object or surface we're describing. Pretty cool, huh? So becasue we're dealing in reflected light, the light sources under which we're operating have a huge impact on how colors appear. So keep that in mind.

So far as painting and room design go, warm colors tend to advance and cool colors tend to recede. In English, warm colors make a room feel smaller and cool colors make a room feel larger. This works indepently of the chroma of the colors used. An intensely red room will feel smaller than the same room painted in an equally saturated blue.

This warm and cold thing has given rise to all manner of pseudo-scientific hoo-hah variously referred to as the "psychology of color." Everybody's heard it at one time or another: "Purple is healing." "Red enhances your appetites." "Blue kills your appetites." "Couples fight more in a yellow kitchen." Most people hear this nonsense and buy into it uncritically, so why not run with it and start sticking pins in a doll while you're sitting in your purple "healing" room then? Unfortunately, this same malarkey gets lumped under the term "Color Theory," but don't be fooled.

The actual psychology of color doesn't go a whole lot deeper than asking the question, "Do you like that color?" If a color makes you feel good, then it's a good color for you. If a color reminds you of something unpleasant, then don't use it. If you hate yellow and you paint your kitchen yellow, chances are good that you will fight with your spouse more. However, that behavior has nothing to do with the qualities inherent in the color yellow.

There is no magic in selecting colors but there is a lot of science underneath it. Human brains are hard-wired to pick out patterns but our reactions to those patterns are determined as much by culture as they are by anything else. High contrast makes a human brain pay attention and low contrast makes a human brain relax. If you like yellow, or you like pink or purple or green or blue then by all means embrace what you like and work with it. Contrast keeps you on your toes, compliment calms you down. Old wive's tales and superstitions should have no place in this discussion at all. Or any discussion for that matter. The goal here is balance and comfort. And that, my friends, is that.

How do I love marble? Let me count the ways...

So I was reading my beloved St. Petersburg Times this morning and came across this little gem in their Homes section.

What was he thinking? Lindsay Bierman, executive editor of Cottage Living magazine, installed marble countertops in his kitchen. Now he's shocked to discover that "everything seems to leave a mark. Even a glass of water." No kidding, Lindsay. That's why most designers strongly discourage using marble as a counter surface. Wine, tomato sauce, grape juice and acids will leave long-lasting souvenirs. "Once I got over that, I began to love the patina," he says. Uh-huh. Live and learn.

Judy Stark, the homes and garden editor of the Times didn't speak with this designer, obviously, when she was taking her no-doubt scientific poll to arrive at her conclusion. Most designers indeed.

I can't think of a more beautiful counter surface for a kitchen. Marble, that wonderful metamorphic rock, has been a popular building material for millenia and for some very good reasons. That it's absolutely beautiful is one of them. Marble is a classic, it doesn't go out of style. Marble has a warmth that utterly lacking from granite. Granite may have depth but it's cold. Marble practically asks to be touched. Granite shouts from across the room and marble sits there and whispers sweet nothings. I defy anyone to walk past a honed marble surface and not run his hands over it. Honed marble in particular has a velvety feel that is downright sensuous.

For all of the wonderful things that marble is, there is one thing that it is not and cannot ever be. It can't behave like a piece of plastic. Marble can never be pristine in a room where people live. Marble is a stain magnet. A marble counter will tell the world that you bake pies every Thanksgiving and that you love to use basalmic vinegar when you cook. It will broadcast that your kids do their homework on your counters. It will point out whether you are a red wine or a white wine drinker. It will age and discolor and sit there as a quiet recorder of your family's comings and goings. It will remain strong and resilient and all of those stains and scars and marks and scratches will blend together into a patina that will make it even more appealing as the years go by.

In a world where everything has to be new and sanitized and shrink wrapped and fake, a marble counter is a bracing slap of reality. Life is a mess and sometimes it's OK to embrace the effects of age. It's OK to have crow's feet and laugh lines. Gray hair isn't the end of the world. A well-lived life leaves its effects on your face, on your psyche and if you're lucky enough to have marble in your home, on your counters.

In the kitchen I'm showing here, I specified honed Calacatta marble for the counters. Calacatta is an Italian stone and a honed finish on stone means that there is a matte finish on it instead of a shiny one. Honing makes marble even more stain prone.

Calacatta is a white stone with black, gray and brown veins in it. It is as beautiful going up the wall, as it does here on the backsplash behind this range, as it is horizontally on the counter. Calacatta is more mottled than it's less complicated and more common cousin, Carrera.

The honed finish makes it absorb light rather than reflecting it back onto the room as it does in the more typical polished finish. In using a honed finish on this counter, it reminds me of fondant frosting on a cake. It has a slight glint to it when you get up close the way a good cake does.

This counter was fabricated and expertly installed by Custom Marble Works in Tampa (813-620-0475). If you look at the detail photo of that window sill, that's what I mean by expert installation. I can't think of another fabricator who would take the time and care to wrap that window sill the way it's been done here. A stone counter job is only as good as the installation so beware low prices and low bidders. This attention to detail isn't cheap but it is a value beyond price.



















This final shot shows the true color range on this stone and it also shows how the under cabinet lighting 18" above this surface reflects. If that were a polished surface, the glare from the lights above the counter would have obscured this detail.

So in closing, any stone counter is a great thing to have in your home. And this designer's studied opinion is that if you can handle its quirks, marble is an excellent material.

The target has been neuralized: fun with achromatic colors

What I left out of this color wheel talk these last few days are a family of colors that don't make it onto a traditional wheel. They're there though, just hidden for most of the time. In the realm of pigment and paint, black is what happens when you add all of the colors of the wheel together and white is what you get in the absence of color. Brown is the love child of two complementary colors. Because most paints have white in them, when you add all ofthe colors together, what you actually get is gray instead of black. Anyhow; black, gray, and white are generally called pure neutrals. Brown, tan and pastels are called near neutrals. Sometimes, pastels get referred to as new neutrals even though most of them are tints. Confused yet?

Don't be. When you spend some time looking at colors, eventually you can pick the component colors from the color in front of you. When you hear me or someone like me refer to a blue as having a lot of red in it or a blue with black and yellow we're not just making that up. To a practiced eye, the make up a color is obvious. This is not some rare talent people are born with. It is a skill that anyone can develop.

Anyhow, The big neutral these days is taupe and its various incarnations. Some times it's called beige, but I think of beige as a yellowy tan. Taupe is a black brown. For me, the taupes do everything I want a neutral to do when I'm using it in a color scheme. And what I want a neutral to do in most cases is back up and allow me to emphasize another element in a room that's in a non-neutral hue. In the dining room pictured here, the designer put together a room that's a vision in neutrals. A lot of times an all-neutral color scheme is there to put people at ease. Since there is no single thing to concentrate on, you can take in everything more easily. If the rear wall were painted a red or a green it would draw attention to that wall and anything on it. Depending on what that accent color is, it could make the room appear to be deeper or shallower.

In the second photo, if the hallway were painted an accent color, it could draw attention to the hall or draw further attention to the living room itself, depending on the accent color. Accent colors are great because they allow you to use an interesting, saturated color that would be too heavy to use on an entire room. I use a lot of neutrals in my work because I love using an accent wall. A room in an all-neutral scheme can be perfectly fine on its own too as evidenced by these two photos. They come across as being clean and uncomplicated and that's always a good thing. Shades and tones of gray can work just as effectively as the taupes shown here. Gray is an achromatic, or pure neutral and I think people are afraid to use it. Don't be. Gray can be warm, cool, energetic or relaxing depending on the component colors inside of it.

I like to use saturated colors. Most people refer to saturated colors as dark colors, but I don't like to use the D word. My love of saturated colors is not always shared by my clients and so if prompted, I can turn it down. Tints of hues such as red, blue and yellow can function as neutrals too. As with the achromatics and the near neutrals, the point of them is that they blend with most of what's around them.





Here is a red neutral.









Here is a yellow neutral.









Here is a blue neutral.





Neutrals needn't be ho-hum or the last refuge of the indecisive. Neutral schemes can be interesting and lively too. In the kitchen shown to the right, the chocolate brown walls are a terrific counterpoint to the white cabinetry. The stark white cabinetry has a marble counter that's acting as a buffer between it and the wall color. The marble in the photo is Carrera, and Carrera always has some brown in it already and in this case, that latent color in the counter is making the bridge effect of the counter even more effective. As attractive as I find that color scheme, it is not for the faint of heart and not something I'd attempt in a galley kitchen.

In the photo here, two neutrals have been joined to make a checkerboard of two yellow tints. It's pretty cool looking and as interesting as it is, it doesn't beat you over the head. Attempting a painting technique like this is a bad idea if you don't know what you're doing. Our friends at HGTV and Lowe's want you to believe that you can do this sort of thing with no training or practice and I feel compelled to tell you that you can't. Nothing looks worse than a do-it-yourself project that looks like a do-it-yourself project. Using masking tape to achieve an effect like this is difficult and time-consuming and it's very challenging to keep wet paint from bleeding under the tape. Checkerboard patterns and stripes only look good when the edges are sharp and clean. If you still feel like you want to do this in your home, practice (and I mean practice) until you can achieve these effects perfectly and repeatedly. Once you've mastered it, then take on whatever you want with my blessing. Until then, faux painting is a profession for a reason. Hire someone who does this for a living and you'll be happier with the result, believe me.

Who cares about color theory? Well, me for starters.

In looking back at the color wheel stuff I posted yesterday, I was struck by how impractical the basic, wheel-derived color schemes seem when you look at the colors on a wheel itself. People tend to shy away from simple, fully saturated colors like candy apple red and kelly green. But as I mentioned yesterday, actual practice of this stuff is more nuanced and it depends on more than wall colors to tie it all together.

So I found some real-world applications of the concepts I listed yesterday and here they are:

This is a monochromatic bedroom. The blues are all closely related; and are in fact tones, shades and tints of the same color. If you remember, a tone is a base color with gray added to it. A shade is a base color with black added to it. And a tint is a base color with white added to it.

Most times, when you look at a paint company's fan deck, the individual pages of it are arranged as monochromatic color schemes. In the room pictured, two of the blues come from the wall and trim paint. More blues come into the room through the bedding and even the irises in the vase on the night stand.

The brown wood tones, the white pillows and the steel lamp are all neutrals. Neutrals are a topic for another day, but for now it's safe to say that black and white are true neutrals and browns are near neutrals. Neutrals go with everything, hence the name.

This is an example of a complementary color scheme. As I mentioned originally, there is some nuance to this. The yellow of the wall and the blue of the cabinet are in opposition on the color wheel even though they aren't in direct opposition.






This is an example of a triad. A triad combines three colors that are equally spaced on the color wheel. In this case, the walls are yellow, the sofa is red and the chair in the foreground is blue.









This is an example of a split complement. A split complement combines the hues to the left and right of a particular color's position on the color wheel. In the example here, the wall is red-orange and red-violet. The third color, green, is coming from the foliage in the vase.

This photo shows an example of an analogous color scheme. An analogous scheme uses colors in consecutive order from the wheel. In the room pictued, the designer used yellow, yellow-orange and orange together to make up a cohesive and balanced room.

So theory does have some practical applications after all. But man does not live by the color wheel alone, and tomorrow I'll regale you with the wild tales of the neutrals and the near neutrals. I don't think that Banana Republic, the Gap, Calvin Klein or many others would exist were it not for the achromatic world of taupe, white, brown, gray and black. If I'm still feeling expansive, I'll get into what's being called the "new" neutrals. Shhhhh, don't tell anybody, but they're actually tints.