The case of the black and white home

Celerie Kemble, the New York-based interior decorator, is famed for her colorful Palm Springsian aesthetic. She’s more likely to paper an entire room in hibiscus pink or blanket a terrace in shades of indigo before suggesting a Faustian palette of black and white.

“In The Wizard of Oz, after Dorothy falls asleep in black-and-white Kansas and wakes in the multicolor fairyland of Oz, she exults, ‘We must be over the rainbow!’” Kemble writes in her opening note. “In writing this book, I found that same spirit of exultation, by traveling in the reverse direction, from profusion to simplicity — away from the rainbow. Black & White (and a Bit in Between) invites you to see that this palette can be freeing instead of limiting.”

Kemble is not a strict implementor of monochrome living. In her tome, you’ll find flourishes of color, striations of texture. Black and white is not so much a way of life as it is a mindset.

It is serenity, in a marble foyer dressed with pale curtains. It is graphic boldness, in a Jonathan Adler-stocked living room with zigzag flooring and pop art pieces. It is rustic living, in a soothing room with black floors and ivory walls and linen furniture. It is old-world glamour, with Dorothy Draper-inspired accents and detailed wallpaper. The list goes on.

In Celine Lopez’s dining room, a Jayson Oliviera painting framed in black, adds texture to a dark green wall. The black frame is a muted punctuation mark to the colorful painting.

Here, black and white does not simply mean modern or sterile. For people who grasp the notion of two-tone palette, they recognize the inherent romance of black and white. Like an old photograph, it telegraphs timelessness, elegance and polish.

Kemble lists 10 reasons to embrace black and white, noting that it’s inclusive (it’s classic and unfussy and camouflages inexpensive furniture), it’s versatile (the addition of a new pillow or rug can change the tone of the whole room) and it’s liberating.

“By maintaining a hard line palettewise from the beginning, you can move forward without paralyzing indecision,” she advises. “The ‘paradox of choice’ — that too many options freeze decision-making — is the essential problem of decorating in today’s world.”

Only when you choose limits, can you truly start to experiment. The aphorism is true of diets and, as we’ve seen in Kemble’s tome, decorating.