With the holiday season in the rear view mirror, the often gray skies of January might be wearing you down a bit.
But take heart, there’s a silver lining in that gray. In fact, there are many shades of gray to provide you the opportunity to turn that cabin fever into a fever to decorate – or redecorate – your favorite room.
Jessica McAllister, designer with D&B Elite Construction Group, Spring Township, will tell you that gray is the real deal when it comes to home design in 2017.
“In Berks County, it’s gray on gray on gray,” McAllister declared.
Indeed, McAllister, a graduate of the Art Institute of Philadelphia, and a designer working locally for more than a decade, knows the Berks market.
The Gray Way
While gray doesn’t always get it’s due (gray clouds, gray skies, gray day), it is a color with some interesting lore. First of all, Americans spell it “gray” as opposed to the British “grey.”
While it can be a color of sorrow like its darker counterpart black, gray with silver overtones is considered an active color.
And, it’s amiable, too.
Native Americans, so it is said, associate the color gray with friendship.
Among the character associations with gray are security, maturity and dependability. Not that you often see it in campaigns signs, but candidates might want to consider using it as, in some circles, it symbolizes a sense of responsibility, practicality and conservatism.
Practitioners of Feng Shui see gray as calm, detached and quiet, lacking in energy and the middle product of black and white. They contend it is a very neutral and indecisive color which doesn't care to take sides.
What McAllister knows is that gray has been a favored color for some time before it gained traction in Berks. Locals have come to embrace it in everything from their walls to their floors to their kitchen and bathroom cabinetry and surface areas.
And that attraction, even allegiance, to gray is apparent in both the residential and commercial markets.
Trending
“It is a newer trend in this area,” she says. “It’s been a pretty popular trend in Philly and I’ve seen it grow here.”
Part of the gray popularity spike may be a bit of McAllister’s doing.
She’s done a lot of design work in the Philadelphia metro area – from condos to homes on the Main Line. There, she found lots of design challenges and opportunities.
“In the condos, you have to get really creative with space,” she says. “You need to use every square inch. The minimalist approach is best.”
But, pulling off that minimalist look is not as simple as it seems.
“It’s very difficult to make something look effortless,” she says.
Sleek built-ins are among the best ways to accomplish the style.
Indeed, while custom cabinetry saves much-needed space in small kitchens, it has also come in demand for everything from master bedrooms to dressing rooms to baths and libraries and living spaces.
Through the Ages
Millennials, especially, covet the minimalist look, she said. Fewer furnishings are required to complete a room and maintenance time is dramatically reduced.
McAllister knows a great deal about cabinetry and built-ins. Prior to joining D&B, she worked for Kohl BP and Kountry Kraft Custom Cabinetry. Throughout her career, she has employed the techniques she learned at the Art Institute, where she graduated first in her class. Even as she earned her degree, McAllister had a keen interest in the hardscape of interior design and mixing woods, metals, stone and introducing edgier elements such as poured concrete.
The interest in and employment of an eclectic mix is especially important in her work in Berks.
“I’ve noted here that people want to pull the outdoors in,” she says. “They’ll look at wood on walls, the same stone inside as out, particularly flagstone for foyers, and outside fabrics for indoor furniture.”
Again, the affinity for gray pops up.
A valued neutral, different hues of gray on different surfaces can meld nicely.
In the D&B Elite showroom, a two-tone wooden-framed Craftsman-style banquette is accented by light gray chairs and white-washed oak engineered hardwood floors with a gray tint.
The state-of-the art, 4,000-square-foot design center opened at the Morgan Drive headquarters in the fall. The design center enables clients to see, touch and visualize different construction and design products before making final selections through each step of the planning process. Tablet technology provides a crucial part of the visualization, and is a big part of McAllister’s repartee with her clients.
Two-Tone Talk
McAllister employs the tone-on-tone look when she selects cabinetry hardware like stainless steel or brushed nickel. Still, she notes there is a bit of a retro trend as she sees copper and gold-finished hardware making a return. A more contemporary and increasingly popular hardware finish is in a rose gold color.
Recently, she used it on an under mount sink in a powder room in a newly built home.
“It was a real wow factor there,” she says.
The hardware colors also extend to the metals in light fixtures, part of the hardscape décor design she specializes in. In her capacity at D&B, McAllister tackles designs both in new homes as well as homes being remodeled. She also works with commercial clients.
A growing market niche is younger retirees, Baby Boomers, who are either doing extensive remodeling of existing homes with an aging-in-place bent or, surprising, building a new home larger than the one in which they raised families. Occasionally, the latter group is building larger to accommodate their teenage children.
“The whole concept of being a certain age and downsizing is going right out the window,” she says.
The affection for gray seems bridge the generations, she said, but there is also a demand for all-white kitchens.
“I’d say I’ve done between 16 and 20 of them in the past couple of years,” said McAllister. “Before it used to be more of off-white. Now it’s stark white with flat panel doors – more simple, streamlined and easy to clean.”
While basic subway tiles remain in demand, there is a trend for larger tiles as well to update the look, she said.
Mixing up the Clientele
McAllister enjoys the diversity of her clients’ lifestyles, but especially loves working with families.
She counsels parents with young children to craft spaces that will accommodate them as they grow from tots to teens. It is, for example, best to forgo a specific playroom style in favor of a more mature family room, especially if the homeowners plan to remain in their residence for many years.
A recent design incorporated that ubiquitous gray on the walls and through the use of engineered hardwood floors, half-natural and half-man made, that can handle the wear and tear of children and their activities over years.
Another very popular way to use a soft gray is with shiplap on an accent wall.
Many Berks Countians grew up being used to wood covering portions of walls, especially in older farmhouses and city row homes. That was generally called wainscoting was characterized via one- or two-inch vertical boards rising about three feet off the floor. Folks also call it bead board.
Shiplap was less a part of the popular vernacular until the HGTV show Fixer Upper featuring Chip and Joanna Gaines of Waco, Texas, captured an extensive and devoted audience. In nearly every home renovation the couple tackles, it seems they incorporate shiplap.
Shiplap was commonly used on exterior walls, but the barn wood-type boards are now gaining a following for indoor walls. The boards are usually installed horizontally, but sometimes on the diagonal. The D&B showroom boasts a shiplap wall with a Craftsman-style door, illustrating the comfortable co-existence of the styles.
McAllister, who says she does not watch the Gaines’ show, does acknowledge the request for shiplap is growing in a variety of room applications. Also gaining in popularity is the use of tile for full wall coverage.
Retro with some Twists
Coming back to the design world is wallpaper with big floral designs. No, this is not a revisit of the garish 1930s style, the foil-inspired 1970s, or the English Country big floral splashes of the 1980s. Rather, the wallpapers, while boasting big designs, are subtle and lightly colored and are usually limited to one accent wall. Gray again figures big into the equation.
McAllister’s work, like D&B clients, is split 50-50 between remodeling and new construction.
Right now, she and the company are doing a lot of projects in the Green Valley Estates area where many of the sizeable homes were built in the late 1980s through early 2000s. Kitchen remodels are common there, she says, as new families purchase the homes or families who have been there from the start either remodel for their own pleasure or in anticipation of selling.
“These are clients who really know what they want,” she says. “My idea in working with them is that I don’t want to make their house look like the neighbors’.”
What other styles does McAllister see trending as we enter 2017?
“Geometrics are being introduced for runners in hallways or stairs and on seat cushions,” she says.
Mediterranean style is also returning, to some degree, with very heavy decorative wood elements.
New, but popular among built-in custom kitchen cabinetry, are coffee stations.
“People like their coffee and their gourmet coffee and the machines that make it and they want a place that’s convenient and that shows it off,” she says.
Gray will continue to provide the backdrop that the florals and geometrics will play off of. And bold browns and yellows will play off the gray in those patterns.
“That will mix with metals and materials to enhance the interest,” says McAllister of the décor.
D&B Elite Construction Group is located at 8 Morgan Drive in Spring Township. It was formed by the merger of D&B Construction Group and Elite Home Builders. Principals of the business are Dan Gring, leading the commercial construction division, Brennan Reichenbach leading the home remodeling division, and Allen Henn, leading the new home division. Visit online at dandbelite.com. ν
By Donna Reed | Photos by April Wilson Photography
