Scans from the book, Black and White (and a bit in between): Timeless interiors, dramatic accents and stylish collections. By Celerie Kemble. Jennifer Post underscores the geometries of her upholstered pieces with dark wood frames and contrasting welting.
Black & White (and a bit in between)
By Celerie Kemble
Clarkson Potter Publishers,
256 pages, $57
For anyone who has ever felt the "paradox of choice" that comes along with collecting dozens of little fabric swatches or staring at 57 different shades of beige in a paint deck, interior decorator Celerie Kemble has found a way to liberate you from that paralysis of indecision.
Ms. Kemble's philosophy – and it's a brilliant one – is that maintaining a hard line with her recommended palette of black and white is not limiting in the least. It's actually liberating.
Too many options freeze decision-making, she says.
"It's the essential problem of decorating in today's world."
In Black & White (and a bit in between) she argues that this palette takes all those choices from profusion to simplicity. And the book is not simply presenting zebra rugs, checkerboard floors and 1960s graphic prints; Ms. Kemble's design is far more sophisticated than that.
Designing interiors is a process of starting afresh, taking risks, and giving shape to the imagination, according to Ms. Kemble.
She points out that, growing up in Palm Beach, Fla., she started life surrounded by pink, turquoise and sunshine yellow, and she still loves to use those vivid colours in her decorating. In this book, she teaches readers how to use black and white as a backdrop for their favourite style, whether they prefer modern or traditional, bright or subdued, dramatic or understated.
Through more than 350 photographs, Ms. Kemble takes readers inside jaw-dropping houses. She draws on the work of great artists in black and white, such as the decorator Dorothy Draper, the photographer Cecil Beaton and the filmmaker Preston Sturges, for example.
She offers 10 reasons to embrace black and white, including her opinion that it's playful.
"With a black and white palette, you can take design risks and stretch your imagination, mixing and matching eras, objects, scale, passions and themes – with less chance your room will end up a mess."
The combination can give the eye a perfect island of crisp, patternless refuge, she says. Strict adherence to black and white makes an array of patterns cohesive rather than dizzying.
Of course, by black she doesn't necessarily mean black. She sometimes means smoke, charcoal, soot, earth, aubergine and olive. White can be cream, ivory, parchment or birch bark.
Ms. Kemble gives hints on the best blacks and whites in the paint deck. Her favourites include Farrow & Ball's "Railings," Benjamin Moore's "Black Bean Soup" and Benjamin Moore's "White Dove."
She finds harmony in an all-white room, but says the trick is to use more than one shade.
"If you use the exact same paint for the moulding and the walls, you may imagine they will blend beautifully. In reality, harmony comes from playing tones off each other. In an all-white room, use a palette of light, medium and dark shades of white, in varying doses of cool and warm."
Hegemony doesn't exist in nature and what feels and looks natural generally looks right, Ms. Kemble says.
She outlines some of the traditional elements that modernists can embrace and vice versa.
She even offers tips on removing coffee stains, and explains why a black couch is not necessarily better than a white one in hiding dirt.
Above all, she advises, in designing a two-tone scheme, don't be too literal: A black and white palette won't lose thematic relevance if you incorporate natural woods, plants, sisal, sea grass, hemp, cane, rattan, grass cloth, jute and raw linens.
The book does such a good job of shining light on the art of interior decorating, some readers may feel emboldened to forge ahead on their own, without a moment of hesitation.
Carolyn Ireland