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7 color questions with designer maryline damour

Green sitting room/Photography: Ariel Camilo/A green sitting room comes to life with custom wallpaper—read the story for details!—on the walls and Benjamin Moore's Aegean Teal on the ceiling.

Maryline Damour, principal of design and build firm Damour Drake, as well as founder of the Kingston Design Connection, a community of designers, artists, makers, contractors, and vendors in upstate New York, sits down with us to answer 7 compelling color questions. Read on for her take on what's trending next year... plus, some juicy visual inspiration.

What are your predictions for popular paint colors in 2022?

Coming out of the pandemic, the trend has been towards comfort both in color and furnishings. I think softer, calmer colors will continue to be popular versus stark whites or more bold colors.

What are some of your favorite uses of paint in your recent projects?

Many don't think to use paint to update woodwork instead of stripping it. We recently applied molding, and used Tamarind by Benjamin Moore to give presence to a fireplace.

Share a recent project where color (bold, neutral, or something in between) was the star of the room or of the project.

An example of a high contrast color story is a home office, below, that we designed with Sheila Bridges's Harlem Toile wallcovering in Pistachio on the walls, and Aegean Teal by Benjamin Moore on the ceiling.

Patterned workspace/Photography: Phil Mansfield/Delightful pattern play in this office nook by Maryline.

What are your favorite paints: white, pink, blue, neutral, and bold?

All Benjamin Moore colors: Simply White never goes out of style. Hint of Pink. Galapagos Turquoise. Iron Mountain is a great neutral for walls and doors. And I use Coral Bronze, a bold color, on a front door of a house with dark green
siding.

When in your design process do you choose paints?

Whatever the initial inspiration, color and paint are one of the first design elements we focus on.

How do you find the right match?

In terms of finding the right match, the first step is identifying whether you are using color as complement or contrast to the rest of your design.

Green sitting area/Photography: Ariel Camilo/With Sheila Bridges's Harlem Toile wallcovering as a focal point, Maryline designed this sitting room with color and pattern in mind.

Are there any particular challenges you have when it comes to selecting paint?

Paint is relatively inexpensive, so it's worthwhile to test out two-foot squares and look at it at different times of the day. That should eliminate a lot of the challenges in picking the right color.