‘You’ve got to live a little’

The inimitable, audaciously confident New York decorator Dorothy Draper advised us way back in the ‘30s that the world was full of beautiful colors to choose from, so we ought to pick the ones we like the best and just throw them together. “Your own taste, resourcefulness and independence will carry you through,” she wrote in her book “Decorating Is Fun!” Above all, she insisted: “Never be afraid of color.”

I like a lot of things Draper had to say on the endlessly compelling subject of color, especially about how there shouldn’t be any waffling about what it’s trying to say, no matter how pale or bright, “just as long as it knows its own mind.”

But fearlessly slapping that first stripe of lime green on the guest room wall is another matter entirely. Better to just live vicariously, we more or less end up deciding, and marvel at the reckless abandon of daredevils such as Draper, who thought watermelon pink was just as safe as watered-down cream for our sitting room.

All through the ‘90s and on into this new year, I’ve lived in what the humorist Dorothy Parker referred to as “a mistaken school of decoration that selects ‘good dirt colors’ and avers that you never get tired of a neutral tint.” Now, at last, I’m tired of it. Tired of everything looking like I’ve brought it home from an archeological dig. Like I’m trying to have the desert, the beach sands and the forests of winter as my home decor. Or like every day I’m having to sit next to one of those overly proper people at a dinner party who is saying all the right things instead of the ones he’s really thinking (or would be, if he had the gumption) and the ones you really want to hear.

So I’m joining the bold brigade, the courageous color crowd who make their homes vibrant and mood-altering with their passionate reds and revivifying greens and pulse-quieting blues. There are so many of us out there now, I thought it was time to devote a whole issue to the power of color to change not only our homes, but also sometimes our lives.