Warming Up a Modern Palette

This living room came to us with good bones and a palette that had drifted too cool — gray on gray, nothing to hold onto. We repainted the back wall a deep, near-black green and let the existing camel sofa suddenly make sense as the warm note it always wanted to be.

Brass hardware and a taxidermy-style pair of sculptural forms on the flanking walls do the rest of the work. They're a wink, not a theme.

Cool, modern rooms don't need color everywhere to feel warm. They need one wall willing to commit.