The living room of the Veranda showhouse in Manhattan: “There was a lot going on in that room because it was such a dinky little apartment. It was like a box, so we had to do something to warm it up. And that color just had a glow to it. That whole family of colors seemed to be sunny and warm and sort of enveloping.”
• "It's the place that you can experiment the most with the least investment. I say, ‘Look, if you're worried about it, we will paint as many shades of that color on your wall as it takes for you to be comfortable.' "
• "I think Benjamin Moore has done an incredible job with those little tiny cans of paint; you can just experiment until the cows come home."
• Moss says that one color on her mind lately is that of the Capriccio rose (pictured below). "It's so faded I don't know how to describe it. If I say apricot that sounds pink or peachy, and it's not. The closest color I could come to was soft pumpkin on the Benjamin Moore chart, and I mixed it with a couple of other colors for a scheme."
• "I always end up at that Capriccio sort of family and this palette of bronzes and coppers and the blue-periwinkle-mauvey family. But then I love shocking colors like chartreuse and things like that."
• When trying to figure out what color a client wants, Moss begins with questions. "‘What do you think has been the most successful room you've lived in up till now? What's the room you spend the most time in? When you go to buy an evening dress, are you looking for a color, or do you stay away from certain colors — and why do you stay away from them?' It's conversation first. Then what I like to do is play the storyboard approach because there are so many nuances of color."
• Moss says she's not keen on trendy color schemes. "It's going to date itself. What I think happens is people do it because it looks like it's now, but it's not really them. It's the fashion victim program."
• Other problems she sees occur when people try to match too much. "There are just some rooms where they just went overboard with too many color tricks, and it looks too decorated and too clichéd. You know — here's a chair that's a color, so we had to have that someplace else in the room, so we did two pillows. Yikes. … It should coordinate, it should blend, they should have simpatico.'"
