The Not-So-Brown Brownstone

WHEN VERMONT HOME-DESIGN GURU SUSAN SARGENT AND her husband, author Tom Peters, decided their busy careers necessitated a second home in Boston, they found an 1850s Beacon Hill brownstone that was like a blank page waiting for a colorful design story to be told.

"The town house had been beautifully and thoughtfully renovated by the previous owner, an architect, but the whole place was white - walls, paneling, everything," says Sargent, whose line of home accessories in brilliant colors is known for its products like fuchsia wool rugs with swirling lavender patterns, flame-red placemats, and mango-orange and white polka-dotted plates. Because the four-story townhouse required no structural work, Sargent was able to focus her attention on the color scheme, seizing the opportunity to paint every room, mostly with her own line of paints, before the couple moved in last summer.

"We love living with color," says Sargent, offering a succinct explanation for the 40-odd hues the house now displays. A weaver trained in Sweden, Sargent has had a lifelong love of color. "Colors connect directly to our moods, our emotions, our hearts," she says. And because she knew the couple would use the house mostly in the cold months (preferring Vermont in summer), she wanted to inject vivid colors inspired by nature to counteract the muted tones of the wintry urban landscape. The resulting palette features lemon yellow, lime green, violet, mango, and pink in myriad variations on the walls, ceilings, window trim, and paneling.

Each of the four levels of the brownstone features two rooms connected by a passageway, a layout Sargent capitalized on: She gave each room a strong color identity and used the passageway to link the schemes.

The kitchen and dining room share the ground level. The kitchen has a whimsical fruit motif in a palette of greens and yellows inspired by Sargent's line of fabrics. For the passageway, Sargent painted a mural that incorporates the greens and yellows of the kitchen with the lavender, mocha, and green in the dining room.

One floor above, the living room and library pop with a stimulating mango-yellow, green, and lilac-blue motif. The library's paneled bookcases stand out with a coating of vivid green on the frame and lavender on the back walls. White crown moldings, door trims, and ceiling add crisp contrast. In the living room, walls are mango yellow, and the ceiling is a yellow that Sargent created by mixing white with the wall color. The strongest color message in the house comes from the hallway on this floor, where a stylized botanical mural in red, violet, orange, and gray by Matt Cote of Lukin Murals in Portland, Maine, evokes Vermont. The mural has become the home's signature feature, says Sargent. "It's a real presence in the house."

In the third-floor master bathroom, Sargent worked with the existing gray-veined marble floor, countertops, and tub surround, choosing deep blue for the walls and three tones of gray for the cabinetry.

The top floor is dedicated to work. A plum-colored archway leads to the home office, and its celery walls seem all the more brilliant in the wash of natural light from the skylight.

Connecting all four levels of the tall, narrow brownstone, the central stairway unifies the space with a progression of nine shades of blue, from darkest at ground level to lightest at the top. It's a subtle gradation, but it represents one of the keys to a successful color strategy. "It's the overall message that counts," says Sargent. "I always think of the whole house, versus one room at a time."

TREND: global palette

"Beautiful, rich, saturated colors that evoke a great escape to an exotic place are at the top of everyone's list," says Sheri Thompson, director of color marketing and design for Sherwin-Williams. Colors such as orange, topaz, wine red, and chartreuse all speak to African, Asian, and Hispanic influences, she says, and "cuisine plays a big part." She likens the colors of the global palette to those found in a good Indian curry.

Susan Sargent's Colorscapes: Inspiring Palettes for the Home will be published by Bulfinch Press (New York) in November. Information on her home products can be found at susansargent.com.