Martha's Red Experiment

Martha's love/hate relationship with the colour red is well known to those around her. She has banished all red flowers from her gardens, yet admires the crimson tones of autumn leaves, particularly on Japanese maples. She rarely wears red clothing or lipstick, but will if the occasion calls for it. In decorating, too, she prefers restrained neutrals, calming greens and pastel blues to the louder warm tones on the spectrum. But when she purchased her property in Bedford, New York, in 2000 she embarked on a daring decorating colour scheme for one of the houses on the property: red! 

In what I believe was the Summer House (the 1770s Colonial on the property once inhabited by the previous owner, Ruth Sharpe) and prior to the complete renovation and restoration of the buildings on the property, Martha used red as the foundational colour to unite each of the rooms in this house, throwing all caution to the wind. She enlisted the help of Kevin Sharkey, who was then the decorating editor at the magazine, to help her realize her vision. She was initially inspired by a set of red roll-down blinds that were used by the former owner in the formal living room, which she found intriguing, and also by the many red-hued decorations, artworks, rugs and fabrics she had collected over the years but had never used.

The historical use of red in Chinese and European decoration, furniture and porcelain was another guiding factor for Martha. She went all in and confidently incorporated these elements into the mix: a chinoiserie chest of drawers and an armoire, a Chinese screen, Asian prints on the walls, red-patterned damasks and toile in the bedrooms. The effect is bold but enveloping and still adheres to Martha's preference for monochromatic spaces, albeit in a more dramatic way. One is still presented with a space with a cohesive palette and atmosphere, which is always important to Martha's design sensibility. Light shades of green were used as a counterpoint to the rich saturation of red, particularly in the bedrooms upstairs, which called for a more serene palette. Red was still used, however, as punctuation throughout the rooms and hallways, as well as an upstairs sitting room, guiding the eye from one space to another seamlessly.

This colour scheme was, ultimately, just an experiment. The house was eventually gutted and renovated from the ground up and the use of red in its rooms only lasted a short while, but it was done to the fullest with the best results imaginable. {Photos by Jose Manuel Picayo Rivera from the November, 2001, issue of Martha Stewart Living}