Yellow Duck
Spice up your Towel Rack!
Yes, towels are functional. We all want soft, warm, fluffy
towels to wrap around us when we come out of the shower. But you
don’t have to use the same towels all the time. By changing your
towels with your mood, the season or the day of the week, you
can give your bathroom a whole new look and feel. If you mix
towels of the dominant color of your bathroom, with white
towels, you have a clean, pristine, fresh look. If you mix them
with black ones then you have a trendier, ‘cooler” look (and
much more practical than white if you have kids in the house!)
For a subdued and harmonious look, buy towels of various shades
of the same color. A friend of mine has a white bathroom with
occasional stripes of pinky-purple in the tiles. On the towel
rack when I visit her (alone) I find a selection of 14 towels in
all shades of purple and mauve imaginable. It looks gorgeous! I
tell her it’s always my challenge to work out how to use 14
towels in the one or two days I stay with her. So whatever the
color already there, vary it and see what combinations you can
come up with. Alternatively, still on the concept of varying the
shades, if you do not like the basic color you can work to
change that with towels. Let’s say you have bought a new house
and there is some green in the floor, countertops and tiles that
you do not really like. You can buy maybe just one towel, or
even a little hand towel, that is close to that green. The all
the other towels can be a green or move into a turquoises or
teals that blend closely with the original color, but are more
to your liking. Using a color wheel can help you get an idea of
just what colors blend with yours, and which you like and
dislike. You can find a really good color wheel at
http://www.ficml.org/jemimap/style/color/wheel.html that lets
you see the colors as you hover over the wheel with your mouse.
Mind you this it is not always possible to “undo” unfortunate
design decisions, but you can reduce them. In the first house of
my own the bathroom had bright green floors, a totally different
color of green bathroom suite, the tiles around the bath were
yet another green with yellow stripes, and to top it all off the
walls that were not tiled were papered with green paper with
yellow ducks. It was horrendous! Nothing could rescue that
bathroom, and since it was a company house I was not in a
position to do much to it. I just hung a dark green shower
curtain and matching dark green towels, bath mat and toilet seat
cover, to hide as much of the other multitude of greens as I
could. It didn’t solve the problem, but the towels definitely
helped lessen the damage. Hopefully you are in a better
position. If you like color and want something that stands out,
you can go with complementary colors. These are colors directly
opposite each other on the color wheel. This can give a very
lively, interesting look but be careful how you do it. For a
while, many years ago orange and purple together were the rage,
and in reality they are not quite complementary colors. Orange’s
complementary color is blue and purple’s complementary color is
green. But orange and purple are discordant colors, meaning they
do not usually “go” together.
I saw a wonderful combination of the two in a restaurant. It had
bright tangerine orange with a dark, deep, almost black purple.
I also saw a bedroom that looked awful with a light orange
bedspread and light, bright purple curtains. I do not know how
anyone could sleep in that room. The idea with discordant or
complementary colors is to make one color deep and the other
light or bright. Towels are a wonderful way to do this, as if
you get tired of the combination it is so easy just to change
the towels and have a more soothing scheme for a while. Towels
come in an enormous array of colors and shades. There are lovely
velour ones that look like velvet. There are fluffy ones,
jacquard ones, towels with lace or fringes, and of course, every
pattern under the sun. Try some patterned or striped towels and
then pick up the colors in solid colored towels. Again, easy to
switch and change. It is also an inexpensive way to decide what
you want to do in the way of paint, flooring and countertops in
a bathroom you are redesigning. Try your color combinations out
with towels and get a feel for how much of what color you want
to have – and once it is done, you already have the towels to
accent it all. So be daring. Look at all the great towels
selections online, pick what you like the best, and build a
whole new look with deep pile, smooth velour or fluffy Egyptian
towels. Add luxury to your bathroom with color
About the Author
Submitted by Fiona Young. Fiona has an interior design
background and writes towel reviews for
www.monogrammed-linens.com which offers a full range of all
types of towels from the best manufacturers, designers and
stores. Fiona can be reached at fiona@monogrammed-linens.com
