New Orleans Real Estate, Colors sets us apart! Do we follow the crowds?
June 26th, 2008 categories: New Orleans Origionals
This is part of a recent article on colors of homes in the New Orleans area and how unique many of the homes and condos are. I have added some of my photos to give you some ideas of the variety. Historic New Orleans is blessed to have many such neighborhoods. Sometimes change is not good. We should be glad to have such a colorful city.
Of course someone is going to go overboard, its like having that Uncle who listens to a different drummer and sees what others do not. They too are accepted as the norm in many areas of town.
“Basically, it’s a fairly inoffensive color, easy to paint over, makes decorating very easy and generally no one has an objection,” Sciortino said. “In my opinion, it is rather lackluster and everyone has it.”
“Whereas the colors in neighborhoods such as the Marigny, Treme and the Bywater reflect more vibrantly colored French-Caribbean traditions, Uptown New Orleans has always tended toward a more subdued color palette, based largely on the architectural styles of the mid-19th to early 20th centuries, said Hilary Irvin, principal architectural historian for the Vieux Carré Commission. But Irvin said the monochromatic trend that has won favor recently Uptown is driven more by fashion than history.
“It’s a weird thing, fashion,” said house painter Joe Wallis. “When I first started in this business 30 years ago, people were painting their houses green, blue, peach,” he said. “Very rarely do I paint a house in blues and oranges anymore.”
According to Louis Aubert, an interior designer known to many as “Mr. Color” for his color consultation work, the phenomenon is as much a response to the stresses of the past few years as anything else.
“I think because we’ve been through so much, if you’re going to go through remodeling your house, you want to gain something,” Aubert said. “They want to feel like something has happened, like we’ve made a change and for the better.”
