DECORATING ADVICE : What’s Black and White and Red All Over? A Warmer Room

Question: My living room is quite open, with a few windows, a cathedral roof and skylights. It has a black-and-white houndstooth sofa, Barcelona chairs and a black grand piano. The rest of the decor is chrome and glass. The carpet is pale gray, and the walls are off-white. The drapery is also off-white. I would like to add a little color and warmth to the general theme. Please help.

SHIRLEY LEE

Answer: With your gray rug, your off-white walls and your black-and-white and chrome decor, I would suggest painting the walls azalea red. Accent the black-and-white sofa with some acid-green throw pillows and white cushions. Fresh flowers will sparkle up your room: perhaps purple, pink, white and red anemones placed in a chrome container. Use red tapes on your window blinds.

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Q: I need to coordinate three rooms that are all visible to one another.

We have just added a family room, and I need to determine the best window covering for the eastern exposure. The sofa is covered in a print of green, blue, deep beige and rust on cream.

The 12-by-13-foot dining room needs wallpaper. A curved archway opens to the family room; a squared arch opens to the living room and, on an adjacent wall, a doorway to the kitchen.

The living room is 17-by-22 feet, with beige carpeting and two wing chairs covered in a Wedgwood blue and beige check. These items must remain. I would like to recover this sofa and add new drapery treatments for a picture window and a side window. We like a look that is comfortable and traditional.

JUDY LECH

A: For your family room with the arch to the dining room, color your walls a rich, soft salmon, and paint your dining room ceiling soft salmon. For the windows in your new family room, use fabric roller shades of a light soft-green with braid tapes of a russet, cream and blue. The shades can roll up.

If you wish to wallpaper your dining room, choose a grassy fabric, Oriental in spirit, of soft beiges on blue. The blue will coordinate with the two wing chairs in your living room that are covered in a blue and beige check. For your living room sofa, try soft salmon accented with light-cream, soft-blue and deep-green pillows. For draperies on your picture window, choose a cream tweed fabric and hang it on brass poles. Trim the drapery with cream and white fringe.

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Q: I live near the ocean. Any ocean-inspired decorating ideas?

BETSY DOONER

A: The colors of the deep sea are swimming into the decorating scene, and marine blue is one of the favorites. White, yellow, melon, rust, lavender, pink and beige all work well with this new and dashing shade.

Here’s a decorating scheme for a marine blue living room: Paint the walls marine blue and the trim white. At the windows, hang draperies of a soft lemon yellow, trimmed in a braid of white, marine blue and rust; set over white sheer curtains.

Cover the pine-board floor with an Oriental rug that features rust, marine blue, soft beige and light pink. For sofa upholstery, choose a print of pink peony flowers of beige, light green, rust, yellow and soft blue on a marine-blue background. Upholster a pair of club chairs in a stripe of marine blue, yellow and creamy beige.

Add some sparkle to your room with brass lamps, shaded in white linen, on light-pine tables. Those light-pine tables would be a nice contrast to the marine blue on your walls. And speaking of pine, find an old pine chest to place in front of your sofa. It should look rustic, as if it came from your grandmother’s attic. Refinish the chest, if necessary, but don’t let it get too shiny.

In the corner, place a pine card table and some pine chairs with rust seats. Seat pads for the chair should be made of the flowery print fabric on your sofa. Trim the seat pads with bright yellow, maybe the same fabric you used for the drapery.

And if you want to add just the right accessory to your walls, choose botanical prints, matted in white linen and framed in gold leaf. The botanicals can be a mix of colorful flowers: geraniums, marigolds, asters, peonies, roses. The more, the merrier.

For a finishing touch, place a tall clock in your room, maybe in an antique clock case.