George Washington - Color Consultant?

Colonial colors inspire today's homes.

Written by Marion Butterworth

SEARCHING FOR JUST THE right shade for a room? Try looking back for inspiration. Historical colors offer the familiarity of tradition and a link to our past. In the Washington area historic homes are plentiful, perhaps the most famous being Mount Vernon, that iconic landmark nestled on the banks of the Potomac River.

Mark Woodman, Duron's color marketing and design manager, explains that Washington took great pride in his home and spent hours selecting its décor and color. He favored the strong greens and blues of the sky, the water and the land that surrounded his once 8,000-acre estate nestled on the banks of the Potomac River in Virginia. He brought nature's vivid colors to the rooms of the mansion where nearly 1 million visitors now see them each year.

Color from Nature

Nature not only inspired color visionaries like the father of our country, but also produced highly sought after pigments. For instance, the colonials bred the American cochineal, an insect that was crushed to create reds. Black walnut hulls produced brown hues, and the bark of the American black oak yielded yellows. Indigo, for blue, was an important crop in Georgia and South Carolina.

Our Vibrant Past

"Our scientific discoveries, in combination with what we know from George Washington's many diaries and letters, reveal a more colorful and vibrant Mount Vernon than we imagined," says Dennis Pogue, Associate Director for Preservation.

"Colors of the past have always seemed safe and familiar," says Woodman. "Now, thanks to modern research, we're finding the colors were much more energetic."

Justin Gunther, Manager of Restorations at Mount Vernon, says that Washington's favorite colors were those popular with society's upper crust at the time. In a sense, "Washington was showing off."

Duron's Exclusive Rights

In 2003 the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, which has continuously owned and operated Mount Vernon since 1958, granted the exclusive rights to manufacture paint in historic colors to Beltsville, Md.-based Duron Paints, one of the nation's largest architectural paint manufacturers.

In a scientific study of the centuries-old paint that covers the mansion's interior, experts had to work their way through up to 26 layers of paint to reach the original hues selected by Washington.

Inspired by the History

Duron's palette named Estate of Colours™ includes nearly 30 colors exactly as they appear in the mansion and 90 more drawn from the plantation and period artifacts. Inspired by the past, the collection is filled with hues that are as relevant and exciting today as they were more than 200 years ago.