Hable Susan - A colorful home : create lively palettes for every room

For my sister, Katharine Hable Sweeney

Text copyright 2015 by Susan Hable.
Photographs copyright 2015 by Rinne Allen.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-4521-4152-7 (epub, mobi)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Hable, Susan, 1970- author.
A colorful home : create lively palettes for every room / Susan
Hable, cofounder of Hable Construction ; Photographs by Rinne Allen.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-4521-3740-7 (hardback)
1. Color in interior decoration. I. Allen, Rinne, 1973- illustrator.
II. Title.

NK2115.5.C6H33 2015
747.94dc23

2014036457

Designed by Allison Weiner

Chronicle Books LLC
680 Second Street
San Francisco, California 94107
www.chroniclebooks.com

Its easy to fall in love with Susan. Looking through the pages of this book, you will understand why.

She is electric. From her outward appearance to her paintings, design work, and home, she lives and breathes color.

Susan embodies all colors all the time. Not just the rainbowsure, those colors are all therebut lets not forget the golds and silvers, all hues that sparkle or glow with luster, every shade of gray and black, colors that are invisible. She is made up of all of them.

In being so passionate and comfortable with her personal palette, Susan shows us just how easy it is to live with color. Her generosity of spirit shines off these pages. Susan invites us to see how easy and natural and beautiful and exciting it all is; she encourages us to trust ourselves and have fun.

Going through this book, I am reminded of so many lovely shared experiences with Susan that involve just looking at and talking color. I remember last year she came to my house on the Cape and we spent the afternoon combing the beach. She returned home with a pile of small shells, which at first glance all just looked brown and gray to me. But not to Susan. When I looked closer I saw a spectrum of color. Purples, magentas, blues. How did I not see this? Am I color blind? Of course Susan had seen it immediately. This is just one example of allowing oneself to see. In this book Susan shows us where to look and how to open our eyes a little more.

Congratulations, Susan, on sharing your passion for color in all its shades.

As a textile designer and artist, I am surrounded by color every day.

In 1999, my sister Katharine and I began our textile business, Hable Construction, developing a line of fabric designs and products based on my artwork. We started with hand-printed bags and then began selling fabric by the yard. Soon we were known for bright and bold colors and lively hand-drawn designs. We opened our own storefront in New York as the business grew, creating and selling all sorts of products for interiors. Through my design work for Hable Construction, I was able to hone my eye for color. I came to realize that my understanding of color came directly from what I saw in the world around me.

When my family and I decided to leave New York City and move to the small, artsy town of Athens, Georgia, I was faced with a new creative challenge: designing my own home for the first time. Even with my design and art background, I felt overwhelmed by the task.

So what did I do? I went on walks and took note of colors from my new cityblooms, feathers, stones, bark, leaves. I looked to my collection of treasures from my travels to guide and inspire me while I was planning. I extracted textures or overall palettes from these itemsthe pattern of an antique textile, the general feeling of a collection of artwork, the color in a rug or blossom. As I gathered inspiration, I asked myself these questions: What did I want to live with day in and day out? What mood did I want each space to have? How would I use each room, and more important, how would my family live in these rooms? These are the key things I considered as I collected the colors that would surround us in our home.

Our home is now a place where I live out some of my wildest color dreams. Some rooms are wrapped in one hue from floor to ceiling; some are eclectically layered; some pale and soothing. While each room is grounded in a specific color story, they are also constantly evolving. I frequently shuffle furniture, art, and accessories around, creating new assemblages and vignettes. A lot can change with the addition of a slipcover or a new piece of artwork, or by simply moving decorative pillows between rooms. This fulfills me creatively, helps me appreciate each component, and most of all, makes my home feel, and remain, fresh. I love the challenge of using what I have rather than acquiring a lot of new things, and color sets the tone for what I want each space to achieve.

Much to my amazement, I now work with color full-time. I utilize my expertise when selecting inks for my paintings, composing the palettes of my patterns for Hable Construction, and pulling schemes together for my home. I even analyze color for other creative industries as a board member of the Color Association of the United States. In this role, I discuss color with professionals from many outlets: design consultants, international color trend forecasters, color theorists, reps from the beauty industry, carpet manufacturers, and others. We all share our current color inspirationsfrom film stills to the natural world to teen pop cultureand predict color trends for interior environments. I love assigning names to our color selections and am especially excited when I see them appear in the marketplace.

As an artist, it is impossible to separate what I do from my daily life. I build color palettes while walking down the street or working in my garden, while playing with my children or dining with friends. When I see a cherry blossom in full bloom, I investigate the details of the bud and the colors in the leaves and stem, cataloguing the palette in my mind. A sidewalk shimmering with mica can provide as much inspiration as a sunset. With this book, Im most interested in inspiring and encouraging you to trust your instincts with color, as I have learned to trust mine. Thats really what its about. I want to empower you to go for it! Become the artist, and feel confident in placing color in your environment. I hope to give you a foundation in the basics of color, help you discover the hues you are attracted to, and offer ideas for how to utilize them in your home.

In the following pages, the color chapters are named after natural objects, as I believe that one formal color name, like red, cannot possibly explain all the richness I see in that hue. The textures and tones of a color are what make it interesting. By walking through the seven palettesRose, Treetops, Arrowhead, Citrus, Thorn, Pool, and Saltyou will develop your own understanding of color. The palettes are only a beginning. Ill take you into sitting rooms, studies, bedrooms, bathrooms, hallways, kitchens, guest rooms, libraries, porches, keeping rooms, living rooms, entryways, and even my art studio to show you how you can translate palettes into different spaces. Along the way I suggest things you might do to help your design investigation and invigorate your color experiencevisit historic sites, gather fruits and vegetables, group objects you love together. You soon will be able to create pleasing palettes from the scenes in your world and incorporate them into your daily spaces.