revisiting my study in red + a little help from my friends

You'll need a coffee (or a calming camomile tea) and your thinking caps on for this one bloggy peeps, but it is informative in places...well one small place anyway. A short time ago I gave you a little glimpse into my study and said that I'd surprised myself by decorating with red...not a colour I had previously bonded with...not even in the lipstick sense! Chillies, tomato soup, red onions though...yep, they get a good workout here.

One of my new blogging friends, Grace from Sense and Simplicity was a bit aghast when I suggested I needed to paint the walls of my study white...she was a bit concerned it'd all look like a candy cane or a barber's pole...actually I wouldn't mind one of those...

I'm so easily distracted...anyway, she got to thinking...and flung me some suggestions from the northern hemisphere about other possible colour combos.  Here are a few more views of the study so you know what we're dealing with...this is the wall opposite my desk and taken from the doorway

This is the desk area...lovely morning light but not so good for photos sorry...

Quite frankly (and no offence) I thought Grace was off her rocker with the pale blue/pale turquoise suggestion...which led us to... a collaboration!  Grace started gathering ideas of red + [insert relevant colour] schemes and is blogging about them today (but don't scoot off there just yet..I've got good stuff too!). Not to be outdone (competitive, me?), I've done my own forensic investigation of the colour red...Shannon Fricke's fabulous book Sense of Style: Colour and Space just happened to be on my bookshelf (I needed a snack...research is hungry work and by this stage the book had migrated to the desk)

and she says (this is the informative bit)...red works with:

• other warm colours like orange and yellow [but I'm afraid that would make me feel like I was working in a fruit salad]
• deep muted shades of plum apparently 'ground' it [I think I'm grounded enough, although some may disagree]
• shades of blue such as aqua give it an extra kick [Grace I'm sending the book publisher to you right now!], and
• neutrals like oatmeal or chocolate help to tame its feisty nature [rwoaar or however you spell that sound]

Here's some of the colour combos I found...I'm afraid my colour palette is restricted to neutrals and blues with a tiny bit of metallic..because I can't really imagine me wanting to live with anything else in this room where I spend so much time, but I know Grace has gone much wilder than that! Goody.

client image board by Amy at Varnish...pretty good huh?

So what say you blogsters. I know you'll help me....but before you decide, please head over to Grace's blog and have a look at what she's come up with for me...I'm off there now because she wouldn't let me see before she posted! I have to be the world's worst procrastinator...could you please help...I really would love to hear what you think I should do :)

At this point I'm thinking pale caramel or stone or pale turquoise...or perhaps I should be thinking wallpaper!!!

images taken or scanned by me from my books (so chuffed I know how to do that now) or house and garden, living etc via table tonic, house of turquoise, design sponge, varnish, fancy and folly