Benjamin Moore Peeps Into Our Bathroom!

The Color Of The Year for 2012 is
(cue the drum roll here) -- Wythe Blue.

From the Benjamin Moore website:

"We have chosen wythe blue (HC-143) as Benjamin Moore’s 2012 Color of the Year. It’s a beautiful, calming hue that has an element of heritage that offers grounding rootedness, providing comfort and stability.  And it's the color of the hall bathroom at That Old House, so of course we had to choose it."

Okay, so maybe that last sentence was tacked onto the real Moore statement.

By me.

But what is true is that Wythe Blue is the 2012 Color of the Year, and it is the color of our bathroom.

 Wythe Blue walls, and White Dove trim.

I love a bathroom with loads of closets.

This bath is 7 x 12 feet, so there is room for furniture in it.

This was a big change for us; all our former homes had teensy baths.

At our last home, the upstairs bathroom was so small that I was afraid to use it when I was

greatly pregnant for fear I'd get stuck and have to call the Fire Department to extricate me.

True story.

The furniture was my Mother's.

An antique washstand, painted blue by Mom in the 1960s, and antiqued with brown glaze.

The ice cream parlor chair also painted blue; my Mom loved to paint furniture.

The paint on these two old dears is naturally chipped and shabby, and that's fine with me.

Wythe Blue is an interesting color.

I find that most women see it as blue, while most men read it as green.

Benjamin Moore tosses it in with the Green family.

Isn't that just like a man?

It is named for the George Wythe House in Williamsburg, Virginia.

(Which I learned when I visited is pronounced to rhyme with the word "with.")

Mr. Wythe signed the Declaration of Independence, and his house may have ghosts.  It's worth a Googling.

Across the hall back here at That Old House is another historic color

from ol' Benny Moore -- Palladian Blue.

This blue is the slightly more anemic tint of Wythe Blue,

and is named for the great Venetian architect, Andrea Palladio.

Mr. Palladio also lent his great name to a style of curved-top window, flanked by smaller windows.

Palladian windows are often called Palladium windows, which is wrong.

It amazes me that even people whose business is houses often use the incorrect term for these windows.

Let's give poor Mr. Palladio his rightful due:  Palladian windows.

And Palladian Blue in our master bedroom.

Our Master Bedroom was pretty grim when we bought That Old House; the wallpaper made me seasick.

If you want to see its transformation, with all the gruesome in-progress pictures, click here.

By the way, Benjamin Moore, about that statement regarding Wythe Blue . . . "grounding rootedness?"

Really?  It's a gorgeous historic color; don't go all touchy-feely new-agey gobbledeygooky on it, please.

It's a shame I don't have any opinions on things, isn't it?  Happy Friday, folks!

I'm picking up a Craigslist desk today.  Pictures to follow!  -- Cass

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