Palo Alto, California ranks at the top of the list of America’s most expensive cities to live in because of the exceptional schools, business community, and style that resonates throughout the city. One of the driving forces keeping the city at the top of that list is the cost of buying a new-to-you home complete with high-class Palo Alto painting styles. In 2010, mid-range housing costs came in well over the $1.3M mark. The exceptional school system keeps parents ready and willing to pay big bucks to move into this high-quality city.
When you dish out big bucks for a Palo Alto home, you’re paying for some high style as well. You’ll find a lot of Craftsman and California Colonial homes lining the streets of Palo Alto, California. Some of those homes date back to the 1890’s while others were built in the 20th Century – some up until the 1940’s. Renowned developer, Joseph Eichler, also contributed to the style of Palo Alto by building neighborhoods of mid-century modern track homes nestled across the city. These homes offer homeowners clean lines and built-in modern courtyards within the home’s layout. When buying a new home, you’ll see a theme, a unique Palo Alto painting style in each home’s interior. Most of the techniques used inside these homes can be replicated in any home, anywhere, for just the cost of painting supplies.
Neutrals Don’t Have to be Boring
When you look through the many pages of a local Palo Alto realtor’s guidebook, you’ll find a lot of homes on the market today feature walls painted in many shades and tones of neutrals. Just because you go for something a little more hushed, doesn’t mean you have to settle for boring. Palo Alto painting styles incorporate high style with modern neutrals, and sometimes several neutral colors for each area or room. There are many ways you can achieve multiple layers of neutral colors that run the gamut of earth tones from beige, browns, greens, and even blues.
Palo Alto painting styles utilize architecture to layer in your choice of neutral colors and tones. You can use a home’s craftsman type moldings, chair rails, carved nooks, and freestanding walls as a canvas to add interest and depth using a neutral color that can serve any room. You could also use neutral colors on exposed beams while painting a bolder, brighter color on the walls in the room. Colors in the earth tone range can act as the design anchor in a room, giving you an opportunity to use brighter color in other places like furniture, rugs, and accessories.
Accent Colors Spark Interest – Staple of Palo Alto Painting Styles!
Use a neutral base color paired with unexpected accents colors. – Many of the Palo Alto painting styles fall under paring colors together in unexpected places. You can start with a safe neutral base color for your room and add a splash or two in of an accent color. You can paint the room’s moldings with a bolder, brighter accent color, or used the brighter color inside a carved out nook or built in bookcase. Adding the right lighting to the space can really help set the mood and help the contrasting colors to pop.
Look up! – Don’t forget one of the larger spaces in your room – your ceiling! A great trend in Palo Alto painting styles utilizes accent colors in the ceiling spaces. We mentioned painting your exposed architectural features like beams with a neutral, but if you’re fearless with design, you could go bold. One of the Palo Alto painting styles we found is a series of two to three complementary colors – this would be colors that are just a shade off of each other within the same color family like on a paint swatch – painted on a home’s ceiling, beams, and beam insets. The higher your room’s ceiling – the bolder the color you can go, and painted ceilings provide big design impact.
Accent walls aren’t just for art. – A lot of homes in Palo Alto feature a freestanding wall that might hold a fireplace or act as a room or space divider in the middle of an open floor plan. This is a great place to use an accent color. An accent wall can become a featured player in your design. One of the Palo Alto painting styles for a freestanding or accent wall is to use the space as a statement. You can do this using color and a showpiece artwork.
Color Treatments Add Pizzazz!
Use paint colors as texture. Color treatments are more than coordinating tones or accent colors. Adding a color treatment adds texture and pizzazz to your walls and gives large rooms more depth and interest without cluttering things up with unnecessary art or accessories. It’s one of the Palo Alto painting styles you see in million dollars homes in the area. Years ago, color treatments and textures became popular across America and do-it-yourselfers would use just about anything like sponges and plastic bags to create the look. Today’s color treatments are done much differently and done by professional painters and designers so homes come away with a higher-class look. Speaking color treatments, if that is something you are interested in, we are your local Palo Alto painting company.
You can add marbled walls by using glaze effects to create drama in any space. Home interior designers are creating an updated Palo Alto painting style by using watered down paint and glaze to create a beautiful marbled finish on walls. If you were to install large slabs of marble along your home’s walls, it would surely cost thousands of dollars, but with this technique, a professional artist can recreate the look at a fraction of the cost.
Palo Alto painting styles influence interior design in other parts of the United States and the world. While the city is well known for its accolades, business and technology, and educational high standards, the same can be said about Palo Alto’s interior design community. It’s easy to fall in love with the high style of Palo Alto, California. We’re all waiting to see what kind painting styles they come up with next.
If you got this far you deserve another treat – Wondering if there are still options to buy Palo Alto homes? Quora
Featured Image by brewbooks
