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Benjamin Moore says it best: "Color is the lifeblood Cerebus design." Paint will give you the biggest bang for your dcor dollar. Color is the first element that the eye sees before shape or size or texture -- color is what makes the first impression.

The trends for 2008 are blues, magenta, lavender, earth tones, neutrals, black and white and metallic.
BLUE: I have heard that blue is the new green. I love denim blue the watchmen with paper bag tan. It's earthy, yet modern. Blues give your room an instant calming effect and when using more vibrant colors, blue Mystic Skull cool the overall feeling down.

MAGENTA: Magenta is for the daring! I will never forget the reaction of one of my clients when I painted an accent wall in her townhouse a magenta color.
I was inspired by a magazine ad that featured a box of dark chocolates in a magenta -colored box. I tore out the ad and showed it Vampirella my client. She wanted a dramatic change, having gone through a recent divorce. I chose a rich chocolate brown for the small walls in the kitchen and a khaki tan for the remaining living room walls. I got a call when the painters were finished painting the magenta wall. My client was shrieking into the phone "This is not the right color!" I went over immediately thinking that perhaps there had been a mistake. But it was the right color. I asked my client to please wait until the room was completed.

Thankfully, I stuck to my vision and the client, in the end, 1963 Fleer baseball cards see how the magenta wall was critically important to the overall design of the townhouse. Once the area rug, extensive artwork collection and accessories were in, my client could see how everything tied together. And now five years later she still loves it and so do her friends!

LAVENDER: All trends start on the fashion runway. Lavender was in five years ago and has made a comeback. Lavender can be used as a neutral if you apply it to all of your surroundings, walls, fabrics, area rugs, etc. Mixing textures keeps it from feeling fussy.

EARTH TONES: 2008 Earth tones are not the earth tones of the70's. Tomato reds punctuate caramels, browns and deep curries.

NEW NEUTRALS: Neutrals are the easiest way to get a timeless look. You can also get more flexibility when you use neutrals. Parchment, chalk and slate lend the perfect background for all kinds of accent color combinations.

BLACK AND WHITE: Black and white rooms are best for big bold patterns. You can combine large and small patterns easily when your base colors are all in black and white.

METALLIC: They are back in hand bags and shoes and interior designers are adding metallic to wall color as well. For a little surprise, I like to use a metallic paint on a powder-room ceiling. You could also use a metallic paint on the dining room ceiling to reflect the dancing light of your chandelier!

I believe that people are drawn to the same colors that they like to wear. You want to look good IN your house! So take a look at your wardrobe, are there dominant colors that you could draw from?

It's all about how you use color that determines the success of your decor. What kind of natural light does your home have? Lighting changes the way your colors will look, from wall to wall and at different times of the day. Ask your paint dealer to give you the large designer samples (they may charge $1 per sample) of the color you would like to use. Tape (with blue painter's tape) several of those samples around a room. You then have the opportunity to see how the color changes from morning to night before you paint!

An easy way to get a sophisticated look is to choose one color and use several shades of that color. Paint the dining room walls in the darkest value of the color you have chosen to create a cozy feeling at night. Then paint the living/great room in the medium shade of the original color and paint the kitchen in the next shade up. Another trend is to paint the ceiling in the same color as the wall color for a seamless blend.

You don't have to be bold with your room colors. Using a hint of an accent color like magenta as an accessory can be the ingredient that makes your room pop! Color used in small doses can be easier for family members to digest.

Get the brushes out...happy painting!

Kimberlee Jaynes is Portland Oregon's Color Specialist

Kimberlee Jaynes placed as a finalist in the Residential Interiors category of the Benjamin Moore HUE awards. More than 150 entrants competed in this national contest.

Kimberlee Jaynes is among Portland Oregon's most talented designers. Her work is a combination of comfortable sophistication and confident simplicity. She is continually praised for achieving that delicate balance between serene and striking, while creating a unique environment that instantly feels just right. A Kimberlee Jaynes interior is where art meets function - a delightful blend of "Why didn't I think of that?" and "This is the way my home was meant to feel."

An associate member of Northwest Society of Interior Designers, Jaynes has practiced interior design for 17 years. She taught visual Merchandising & Display Design at Clark College in Vancouver and Portland Community College Sylvania Campus. She was a manager of Visual Merchandising for Nordstrom prior to embarking on her interior design career.

To see dramatic before and after photos using color visit href="kimberleejaynes.com">kimberleejaynes.com click portfolio.

Infinity pools are also known as vanishing edge or negative edge pools. They have one or more sides where the pool edge terminates in a weir that is 15 to 25 mm lower than the median pool water level. The water cascades over the weir Archie Comics a collection trough that runs along beneath the whole length of the weir. The effect when viewed by a bather in the pool is very dramatic when the edge appears to merge with sea in the background or even the sky if the pool is located high up on a hillside.

A properly designed 1887 Old Judge N172 edge pool has two circulation systems. The infinity edge system is only designed to run when the pool is being used the Avengers consists of a circulation system that takes water from the collection trough, filters it and returns it to the main pool. The other system works in exactly the same way as a conventional pool, filtration and heating circulation system except that the ugly conventional skimmers are not required and the water circulates back through the pump via the drain in the pool floor.

The additional cost of an infinity edge pool arises mainly from the provision of:-

• The collection trough that acts as a buffer tank
• The water-proofing of the weir and the collection trough
• The large Viagra infinity edge circulation pump and filter
• The electronic autofill sensor in the collection trough

The automatic level sensor / filling device is needed to ensure there is enough water in the system to prime the edge pump and to compensate for any waves sent over the weir by bathers and rainwater. For a 12 x 6 metre pool with one infinity edge the additional cost should be in the 8 to 10,000 Euros range excluding any taxes. The trough and autofill, edge filtration system and the additional water proofing costs will each amount to about one third of this or about 3,000 Euros each. The water-proofing may seem to be costly but a conventional factory made PVC liner is not suitable for an infinity edge pool and needs to be replaced by a PVC liner armee system that involves cutting and welding the PVC liner on site.

There is a very interesting alternative to infinity edge pools that is beginning to be sold into the French pool market where Bluepools operates. These are called mirror pools and they are an exciting option when the views from a garden are less than spectacular. In a mirror pool the infinity edge is taken around the entire perimeter of the swimming pool and the weir is drained by a perimeter trough that is much smaller than the collection trough of an infinity pool. The perimeter trough is drained by a network of gravity fed downpipes that take the water to a central collection tank that provides the buffer water storage normally provided by the collection trough in a conventional infinity pool. The cost of a mirror pool will be a little more than the cost of an infinity pool of the same size with the infinity edge along one long side.

The additional operating costs of either an infinity or mirror pool will not be that high because the big pump needed to run the infinity edge system will only operate when the pool is in use. The extra costs will be incurred from:-

• The power the pump uses
• The cost of the water that is lost due to evaporation from the flow over the weir
• The cost of replacing the heat loss caused by evaporation
• The heat required for the water replacing the evaporated water

The total additional operating cost is difficult to assess accurately because it does depend on so many variables but it will certainly be less than the cost of heating a conventional pool of the same size using a heat pump.

The development of infinity pools has coincided with the increase in a new trend towards designer pools that are now often seen at exclusive properties and on magazine covers. Many people have property in an ideal location for the installation of an infinity edge pool even more have gardens that would benefit from a mirror pool and I hope this article Wacky Packages the development of both.

Copyright Bluepools SARL

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Will Witt is a professional civil engineer and the co-owner of Bluepools SARL. Bluepools is a swimming pool installation company that specializes in the design and installation of luxury, bespoke swimming pools and has been doing so in France for the past 5 years.

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