By Janice Lindsay
Contributing Writer
“Mocha mousse.” Sounds luscious.
But we’re not discussing dessert. We’re talking color, the Pantone color of the year for 2025. Mocha mousse is a soft, rich brown that, according to Pantone, “nurtures us with suggestions of the delectable qualities of chocolate and coffee, answering our desire for comfort.”
Each year, the year’s designated color appears in creative work by interior decorators, furniture designers, fashion designers, graphic designers, make-up inventors – people who create something for us to look at.
I assume it also appeals to stylish homeowners who enjoy re-painting their walls and buying new furniture and accessories to go with their new walls.
That’s not me. The new color is lovely, and I desire comfort as much as anybody. But I don’t want to paint my walls ever, because I like my friendly, unstylish beige walls, and I believe in the time-honored advice, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Nobody will ever accuse my home of being stylish, unless there’s a style called “Middle-American Comfortable.”
A few years ago, I came across a concept that was new called “undecorating.” The design guru who wrote the book called it the “no-rules approach to interior design.” She said we should follow our instincts, do what we like, and that undecorating was about “soul and personality.” I approve of the no-rules approach, and think I have a hint of soul and some personality.
So, for example, here’s my dining room. Cream-colored textured wallpaper chosen by the house’s previous owner 27 years ago. Walnut table bought when my husband I were married in 1968, covered by a slightly worn, middle-aged red tablecloth. Comfortable chairs that don’t match the table. Walnut hutch holding a few dishes but mostly books. A spinet piano that matches nothing but sits in the dining room because that’s the only place it fits. On one wall, a colorful collage that our son made when he was in high school (he graduated in 1988). Built-in propane fireplace chosen by the previous owner; its black-marble-look framework and gold trim make it seem like a visitor to our planet who stumbled into the wrong neighborhood.
I achieved this mix-and-not-match splendor by doing as the guru said before she even said it, following the instincts of my soul and personality. Once she said it, I was stylishly undecorated for a while, but undecorating is no longer in, and neither am I.
A downside of my “follow your soul and personality” approach is that my soul and personality tend to collect things. And I want those things where I can see them. And those things get dusty. And I hate to dust. I do not know why. A friend once said to me, when we were both newly married: “Big deal, you dust and vacuum, six months later you have to do it all over again.” It does seem a bit futile.
My collection of ceramic and glass birds inhabits a bedroom. Elephants in the kitchen. Owls in the living room. Ukuleles and angels in the dining room. Buttons next to the TV. Earrings that I no longer wear, displayed on a 10-inch square screen in a picture frame on the kitchen wall.
I do make an attempt to bring like colors together. One room is vaguely blue, one vaguely red. Furniture is inviting and of various vintages, the newest being a pair of twenty-year-old easy chairs.
All this bring comfort and enjoyment to my unstylish soul and personality.
I’m glad that nobody would ask to photograph my house for a stylish beautiful-home magazine. I hope nobody would want photos for a Middle-American Comfort magazine. If they did, I would be forced to dust.
Contact jlindsay@tidewater.net.
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