In Living Color

“Color belongs to our being; maybe each of us has his own.” Architect Le Corbusier

The taupe-colored exterior of a Santa Ana house with its black trim gives no clues to the blasts of color inside. From the large, yellow-and-orange living room to the vermilion library to the cloud-covered, gold guest bedroom and cobalt-blue bathroom, the small house struts its stuff as fearlessly as a baroque castle.

“White walls to me are primers,” explained Stan Dufek, while his wife Stacey nodded in agreement. Their use of color is a dramatic and personal decorating statement that was inexpensive--$250 to paint the interior. “We’ve always admired European-style homes with all their color and interesting finishes.”

When the Dufeks purchased their 1930s Santa Ana house three years ago, it was the culmination of years of searching for the perfect place.

“We were attracted to older homes because they have more style and personality,” Stacey Dufek said.

Coming upon the Floral Park area of Santa Ana by chance, the couple, who have been married 10 years, found the perfect house--1,580 square feet of living space, three bedrooms and a large backyard.

The house was structurally sound but needed a lot of cosmetic help, according to Stan, a 36-year-old graphic artist with Overwear, a Marina del Rey clothing manufacturer. The “help” included paint, and lots of it.

“Paint is all we considered,” Stacey said. “I don’t even like wallpaper.” Some extra expense was incurred to repair some walls so they could be painted properly.

One of their first color-filled projects was the living room.

“We were looking for an Old World cathedral look, as if it had been there forever. Really, the existing beams in the room were the inspiration for the design,” said Stacey, 33, a sales rep with C.R. Gibson, a gift ware company.

The beams attracted the Dufeks to the house originally, since the home’s architecture is otherwise not particularly noteworthy except for arched windows.

“When we walked through the door and saw those wood beams and the wrought iron, which is very unusual for this area, we just fell in love with it,” Stan said. “The room also was inspired by a picture I have of an abandoned chateau in France with wood floors, yellow walls and a stenciled border around them. I tried to match that.”

*

So with that vision in their minds, they set about painting the room. They consulted books on faux finishes, all of which seemed too complicated.

“Twelve steps were not going to work for us,” Stacey said.

“Three was more like it,” Stan agreed. “You just paint on a base color, then add a darker or lighter color, depending on the look you want, and then rub that in while it’s still wet. It’s done. You just have to keep moving while the paint’s still wet.”

The first cracks in the paint on the ceiling came about accidentally, when heat caused the paint to bubble up.

“I started to repair it, then I looked at it and thought it looked neat, just like an old building, so I started scraping more chips off,” Stan said. To complete the look, he’s also faux-finishing the corners so they appear to have accumulated dirt over time.

The Dufeks happened to pick colors for their house that are in accord with the Color Marketing Group, the 1,500-member, nonprofit Virginia-based association that has dictated color trends for more than 30 years. We can thank them for avocado refrigerators in the 1960s and mauve hotel rooms in the ‘70s.

For the year 2001, the group forecast that blue will be the most important color, complemented by taupe, clay and pale brown on one hand, and spicy gold, red and orange on the other. Blue reflects spirituality and the supporting colors add to the feeling of serenity. The bright colors are to add energy.

“Color trends and the speed of adoption of these trends are often directly influenced by changes in our society and even current events,” reported Christine Dickey, a member of the Color Marketing Group from Torrance. “We identified that the new colors must be authentic, possess some degree of heritage, originality, tradition or craft. This trend is led by Generations X and Y.”

*

Certainly the Dufeks’ living room qualifies as having both ties to the past and spiritual overtones. Stacey’s religious art collection, including an oil painting of an angel and a cross over the door to the kitchen made from old picture frames, is very important to her.

In fact, just about everything in the house is from the past and has been purchased at flea markets and garage sales, which are passions for both Dufeks. They have bought so much that they rent a space at It’s About Time, a stall-filled antique store in Orange, to sell the items they don’t need. Many of the pieces in the house are from relatives.

“I keep everything that no one else really cares about,” Stacey said. “I have a lot of things in my home that belong to other members of the family. Since all my grandparents are still alive, they can come over and see that we’re using their things every day. They like that.”

The living room is separated from the bedrooms by a dark, brownish-gray velvet curtain on a rod. The Dufeks painted the wooden door frame a dark brown to coordinate with the orange walls in the small hallway.

Inspiration for them is everywhere--in magazines, books, flea markets, films, and even an Oriental tray from which they pulled colors for the den.

“I keep a book of color swatches from every paint store,” Stacey said. “ . . . When I’m looking for a particular color, say green, I go through and find all the greens that are even remotely close. That way I’m not running all around town.”

Some of the rooms’ designs came about by accident.

“I had this vision of a room with lacquered walls,” Stacey said of their den. “We didn’t know it was going to be an Asian room until we got the walls done, and then we decided we needed a black trim.”

They added the wall moldings and had to rebuild a few walls because of a buildup of paint and wallpaper. In this usage of texture and layering, the Dufeks are again on a par with trends identified by the Color Marketing Group.

“The focus is not only on color, but what can be done to enhance color,” said Hall Dillon, president of the group. “As people strive for simplicity in their daily lives, paradoxically, the texture of color grows more complicated.”

*

To get the looks they wanted, the Dufeks re-textured all the walls, removed the popcorn ceiling and added wainscoting. A major project involved reopening all the windows in the house, which a previous owner had painted shut. They had to take all the windows apart and restore them to the original 1930s look.

In the master bedroom, Stan added brick wall paneling on one wall and put plaster over the black grout to make it appear more realistic. He also put moldings around the thrice-painted ceiling and covered an existing wall niche for a lamp with a piece of molding. Upholstery fabric was used as drapery in the bedroom since the room fronts the street. The kitchen has a cool look with a lavender and apple-green color scheme, a look the couple saw in a magazine.

“There are lots of things we didn’t get with this older house, like a fireplace or built-ins,” Stacey said. “But we do have the breakfast nook, the beautiful beams, the yard. We like living in a house that has the feeling that generations of people have lived there.”