Jun 10 2007
Seascape, Beach & Ocean – Marine Art Themes – Color Choices
When decorating for a marine art theme – there are endless possibilities in objects and color schemes …. from mostly colorless seashells in a colorful basket for the bathroom tank top to massive Fine Art Prints for the living room to stenciled palm trees and surf scene for the windowless kitchen sink backsplash. Personally, I love stenciled scenes in my home – mine are small (some vines at the dining room window for example) and do not overpower the room or become the focal point – the stenciled designs are wall decoration accents and leave plenty of room for artwork to hang on the walls too. There are lots of choices of pre-cut stencil patterns and lots of stencil paint color choices. If you plan to do your own stenciling and / or cut your own stencils, be sure to read about stenciling if you have never done it before and always buy good quality stencil paint & stencil brushes.
Blue and a variety of blue shades are usually what most people associate with a marine color scheme … I like yellows, oranges, reds or purples also … a lot depends on your personal preference for colors and what you can live with comfortably on a daily basis but it is just as easy to decorate using sunset sea colors (reds, oranges and yellows).
I’ve been told that red is not the color to use to rest or relax in a room at all … that might be true depending on how you use red in that room but it is not true about every possible use of red in a room.
There is a big difference between having a 44″ x 55.5″ fine art print of “Landscape Oak at Sunset” by Pol Ledent hanging on one corner on the longest wall (painted in ivory, beige, tan or pale yellows perhaps) of a living room as a focal point with all the accent colors in various shades of tans and browns luring you into enjoying quiet sunset moments or having an entire room painted fire engine red … I personally do not think the fire engine red walls would be particularly restful for me … though I can think of lots of decorating ideas to go with it for a game room or family room. Ivory or pale yellow walls with red throw pillows on the furniture for accents with seascape original paintings or fine art prints would be fun too.
Here in Houston, nearly every home for sale or rent (including apartments & manufactured homes) has a fireplace … I have never seen so many fireplaces everywhere in my life … I cannot imagine why everyone has to have a fireplace … I hardly ever notice anyone actually using them … it is not as if it gets icy or cold enough here to need one for the power going off to heat the house in the winter time …. the ones that have a window grate on them are more attractive than the ones with no covering … they just look like giant holdes to me … a nice fireplace screen will hide that unattractive dark hole … it can be frightening to small active imagination children and appear to them being a dark, secretive, monster infested door to a dungeon in the middle of a house wall at floor level. I do not remember seeing fireplaces all over Des Moines Iowa like they are here … none of the apartments or trailers in Iowa that I lived in had fireplaces … and trust me … during a blizzard with the power off for several days … you wish you had a fireplace to keep you warm up there! A beach scene to cover the fireplace makes me smile .. it is much more cost efficent to bring the beach to my home than for me to move to the beach and buy a beach house!
Game room decorating – especially with teen-agers with lots of drop in friends in mind … my daughter as a teen-ager was always inviting her friends over for various reasons at various times throughout the week and week-ends … drinks & snacks were a must … with all the resultant mess from having a group of teen-agers in the house all over the living room … we did not have a family room or game room … but if I had, I think it would be great to have had stenciled palm trees muraled around a fireplace on the game room walls to highlight the beach theme with the beach fireplace screen and wooden beach lawn furniture in the game room with sand colored tile or laminate flooring … sounds like lots of fun … recessed lighting – no lamps anywhere!
Easy clean up with no yelling is always a good thing when you have a house full of teen-agers coming and going – you want to know where they are and what they are doing but it gets old for everyone very quickly if you have to nag them constantly about being careful not to destroy your house. Plan ahead … make you & your home teen friendly – you will know who their friends are, what they are doing and what they are snacking on … fat free snack crackers, veggies with bowls of fat free ranch dip or peanut butter and an iced tub full of bottled water are a better offering than sodas and chips.
Brightly colored pillows of all sizes from floor cushions and stuffed animals from large to the tiniest of bean bag stuffed animals … blown up beach balls for decorations (great for those exuberant teen-agers needing to horse-around being kids without hurting themselves) … one would want a wall mounted TV so it would not get knocked over … a room that is teen-ager / horseplay friendly would be a lot of fun to create and a lot of fun for them to use … teens can be clumsy and careless … having a room in the house where spills or pillow fights with non-harmful pillows or playing catch with stuffed animals would be a lot of fun … a sea life theme of stuffed animals with a variety of pillows in every color imaginable will make this a bright and cheerful room even when the teen-agers are not using it – a couple chests for the stuffed animals (I would rather not have shelves to line the walls for stuffed animal storage). You could hang kites or windsocks from the ceiling or use them as “window curtains” for the game room … these are just a few ideas to use seascape ideas, art & themes for decorating your home & life.
