Spanish and French architectures

I was looking at some pictures and magazines, where photos of some spanish villas, and french houses and articles are there. From those, I think spanish and french architecture styles are along these lines.

French use hues of pink, olive green and brown heavily. French windows are long and sleek. Spanish villas typically use terracotta bricks heavily. Windows are characterized by moorish arches, less-height, fat (stubbed) windows called Matador windows. (I will upload photos for all these soon).

Also, one can say that spanish villas have stairs from inside the houses, and a patio set on ground level, slightly elevated, which leads to the staircase. Ceilings are also of varied heights in spanish villas.

Overall, french villas used the purity of colors whereas, spanish villas showed the moslem influences they got over centuries.

I was playing with my kid on mspaint, and discovered something nice and interesting. Can you believe it, the above image is created using mspaint, and 4 attractive colors. Do you like it? It looks very similar to those window glass art.

For those of you interested in designing interior, there is a software called "Home Designer Suite", which is awesome. It can give nice images of 3-d interior, that one can design and see, by himself.

Sorry folks, I got into some Copyright issues with the originators of those interior photos, had to remove them from here. Sorry about it.

Reverted the look back to original one, retro look is gone now.

All, I changed the look to be more retro-ish for this month end. Let me know, if you like it or not. Remember, this also does abide by the 3-4 colors at max rule.

I recently got a good idea, regarding all the interior pics lying around. The daily newspapers, have color interior photos (paper quality is not all that good, but you get the idea looking at the pictures).

At least once a week, my local newspaper gets these photos, and a supplement detailing how various people did it in their houses.

I cut these photos/graphics, and keep them some place. One day, I hope a 3d software (free-one) comes that can be used to model these things. (I think google has a closest software to this, check out "google sketchup" at http://sketchup.google.com/. Can someone come up with a set of drawings of interior items, which can be used to build up rooms and such), using which I can re-construct these models, into 3d houses, comprising of rooms/decks/gardens/landscapes/elevations, all combined.

That is my long-term dream, but, however, I am cutting and keeping the interior pics, as a first step to it.

Do you know that minimizing number of colors is important in Interior? Of the 4 photos got by googling, check for yourself how many are using 3-4 colors at max!

And of the things that are using more, imagine, how would it look like, if you removed the colors used in small quantity. It would surely be better looking. Folks thinking of making their homes look good, but, can't do it, use this simple trick. Follow 3-4 colors to the brim, whatever you put in the room, should have one of these colors, down to the exact shades (shown in the lighting used).

Often times, we do not recognize how much of color clutter, we put in a room. We just keep piling things in a room, till the scene falls apart visually. We sure do know each individual item kept, looks great by itself, but, 'why is the whole thing not working'? People get confused about their ability to choose interior accessories, since, the thing just does not look good in the room, it only looks good in the shop.

Happy decorating!