10 Ways to Decorate with Orange

Some people love the colour orange and some people don't.  I'm not a huge fan, but I have to say the colour is growing on me.  However, this being fall and everything, I thought I would put my Google fingers to work in search of some inspiring rooms decorated with orange.  It is interesting to see what colours work with orange.

Here's what I came up with - 

1)  Orange with white - The majority of rooms I found paired orange with white and sometimes touches of black, which you can see in the rooms below.  It's classic and clean and a nice way to let this bossy colour have its way. 

Martha Stewart

 Sarah Richardson

  Domino via High-Heeled Foot in the Door...

2) Orange with black - It is the rare bird that will brave the Hallowe'en connection and pair orange with black, but here is a lovely bathroom that uses this combo.

 via Small Place Style

3) Orange with brown/beige - I would have thought orange and brown would look very 1970s but the bedroom below pulls off this combination, keeping the look fresh with all the white trim and furniture. 

decorpad

This room pairs orange with beige and tan, giving a modern take on a woodsy colour combo.

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4)  Orange with gray - Here are a couple of rooms that pair orange with gray.  Using gray, instead of black, avoids the Hallowe'en look but still gives the contrast of bright orange against soothing gray - a lovely combo. 

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 Courtney Giles

5) Orange with blue/turquoise - If you want to pair orange with something brighter than a neutral, by far the most popular choices are shades of blue.  I love the combination in the boxes of the office below.  Do you think I could keep my office tidy if it looked this cute? 

Martha Stewart

These next two photos have a very soft aqua paired with orange.

decor pad

Orange also looks amazing with a stronger blue or turquoise as you can see in the next two photos.

 HGTV Dream Home 2010 

6) Orange with green - According to my daughter Kate, you shouldn't ever use these colours together as they just scream - CARROT - but then again, we appear to have orange issues in our house.  There are surprisingly few photos with this colour combination, and fewer still of rooms that look good (well in my opinion anyway).

 Elle Decor

7). Orange with purple/pink/red - If you are contemplating these wild combinations you are definitely entering the bold room category.  I actually really like these rooms - to look at - in  a magazine.  I don't think I could ever live in a room with these bold colours, although they do look great in a little girl's room or a bathroom.  Then they are just playful and fun.  I always thought if I bought a house that had pink bathroom fixtures I would go wild and do the room in pink, orange, and red. 

decorpad

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Thibaut wallpaper via Bright Bold and Beautiful

Martha Stewart

8) A lot of orange - Sometimes orange takes centre stage in a room, like in the room below where all the walls are painted orange along with having orange bedding and accents.  Now that's one bold room!

 Sixx Designs via Stylehive

9)  A little bit of orange - More often, though, people prefer their orange in small doses.  This has the advantage that the orange can be changed to another colour when you get tired of it.  The orange is often as part of a pattern in stripes or florals or in accent pieces around the room like lamps, art, or the iconic orange Hermes boxes.

Pottery Barn

decorpad

 
 Sarah Richardson 

 
  via A Gift Wrapped Life

10) Disposable orange - One of the easiest ways to include the colour orange is in flowers, fruit, candles, or pumpkins.   Yep, that's right, some of us just like a touch of orange that can be disposed of and we can return to our normal quiet decorating ways.

Arhzine

Good Housekeeping

For two days while I was writing this post I thought I only had orange in the house when we have our pumpkins and japanese lanterns out, but then I went down to the basement to say goodnight to William and low and behold what do I see - ORANGE.  Am I crazy that I forgot about this much orange.  Okay, don't answer that.  Obviously I fall in the orange with blue category (you can see other basement photos here).

So what about you - are you an orange lover or orange hater?  What colours do you like orange with?

And if you want to see some inspiration photos for other colours, check these posts out.  You can see what colours go with red in this post here.
And check here for aqua/seafoam room inspiration photos.
And here for green rooms.
And here for yellow rooms.

Autumn Wreath

Our front porch still has the flower containers, willow chair, and wooden bench on it that have been there all summer (you can see it here).  While it looks nice, I really am feeling the need for a little fall action out there.  A friend and I had been trying to find a free evening to get together and create some autumn-splendour wreaths.  The stars finally lined up last night and we got them done.  

We started off with a table full of grasses, seeds, weeds, acorns, dried corn husks, dried chilli peppers - and two naked grape vine wreaths.

My aunt showed me some gorgeous soft grass up near our cottage that I picked a few weeks ago for the wreaths.

Here's a photo of my mother cutting some for us.  Aren't I the helpful one - holding the camera and the bag.  Thanks Mom!

I love how soft this grass is.  My aunt cut some last year for her living room and it stayed looking perfect all winter.

Anyway, back to the wreath-making.  After a few hours of cutting, and glueing, and poking bits in here and there we both had fall wreaths for our front doors.  

Here is my friend proudly holding her finished wreath -

and a close-up of her gorgeous wreath.  I love the little bundles she tied with corn husks, chilli peppers, and the japanese lanterns.

This one is mine on our front door.  The orange and red are perfect contrasts with the blue paint on the door.

My friend sewed the chilli peppers together to make a bundle which I glued on at the bottom and I used some of the japanese lanterns from our backyard.

Ahhh, doesn't that look better.  Our front porch looking a little bit more like fall has arrived.  Pumpkins coming soon, but I really have to take this fall decorating business one step at a time.

I have a feeling the whole wreath will blow away in the first strong wind so I had to take a photo of it quickly to show you.   

Anyone else make a fall wreath?  I have to say it is one economical project, since we had one grapevine wreath and only had to buy the other one ($3) and the chilli peppers ($4).  Everything else came from the roadside.

Linked to Fall Open House at Hooked on Houses
and Strut Your Stuff Thursday at Somewhat Simple 
and Show and Share Day at Just a Girl

Photo Challenge: Age

There is an old camp down the road from our cottage which has many wonderfully aged and worn buildings.  We often walk around there when it is unoccupied.  The camp was established in 1924 on a lovely point of land with a rocky shoreline.  Between you and me, the camp has seen better days, which means it is filled with homey old-style weathered and worn docks and cabins. 

Here are a few of the photos I took there this past weekend.  The fall colours fit well with the chipping paint, don't you think? 

 Do you see those birch just past the cabin?  That dastardly beaver has been at it again.

Here's a closer look. I'm not sure why the beaver stopped at this point, but we checked again the next day and he hadn't chewed any more. (You can see what the beaver did a few weeks ago to a birch along the shore from our cottage here.)

This seat carved from a stump is slowly decomposing.  This has been a good year for mushrooms and fungi, as you can see on the seat.

I love this sign that is nailed to the dining hall.  Does this child not like group sports and he's running away?  Is he directionally challenged and can't find the sportsfield?  Maybe he doesn't know left from right?  Whatever the problem, this lad is not going to make it to the sportsfield any time soon.

Linked to photo challenge at Razmataz
and Outdoor Wednesday at A Southern Daydreamer

Friday Photos - Birds on a Wire

One of the things I was looking forward to doing in September (here's the complete list) was taking photos of birds sitting together on a wire and I finally got my chance.  

Over the past few weeks, as I was driving to and from work, I often noticed large flocks of birds sitting cozily on a wire or swirling overhead.  It would drive me crazy because there I would be in the car admiring the birds while my camera was sitting at home.  I finally got smart and started taking my camera with me every day just in case.   I was rewarded this week, when I stopped at a red light, to see these birds sitting together on a wire.   I quickly snapped some photos while the light was red and was smiling all the way to work.  Of course, I played around with the photos a bit on Picnik as well.

I'm often extolling the benefits of using Picnik, an on-line photo-editing program, on your photos (see here and here), so I thought I would throw in one photo to show the before-and-after shots.

If you see a crazy woman at a stop light rubbernecking at the birds and snapping photos, please just smile and wave at me!