The Keys to Color: A Decorator’s Handbook for Coloring Paints, Plasters and Glazes

This book is for decorators. inspired amateurs, working painters and artisans who seek to enhance their knowledge of color as it is used over large areas like walls and ceilings. Discover a different approach to color than that written for artists. Although the rules of color stay the same, the lighting and scale of interior design needs creative methods. Learn how to make your own colors, match existing colors and fix them if they are wrong. Begin by learning how to see colors and how to understand why they act the way they do. Delve into advanced topics like pigment qualities, options and choices to the way pigments react with each other and why. This is the first time in eighty years that practical color theory has been addressed for architecture. Many of the materials used for interior design like paint, plasters, glazes and stains are explained in detail. Develop an understanding of advanced color topics like constructing complex and full-spectrum colors, working with metallic and mica paints, and using color in interior design.

Dean Sickler is the Director and core instructor of Dundean Studios, a working and teaching studio in Chatham, NJ. He has been in the painting and decorating business since 1975 having started as an apprentice painter in Los Angeles. In 1986 he founded Dundean Studios as a decorative arts studio and has since executed decorative and art commissions across North America. He has been active in conservation and restoration work and holds a BA in Art & Art History from University of Toronto. In 1998, Dundean Studios evolved into an independent decorative arts school and studio. It has since provided instruction to over a thousand professional faux finishers, painters and inspired amateurs with an emphasis on product knowledge, technique and execution. Dean has a national reputation for being in the forefront of the new water-borne technologies and is regularly consulted by multi-national manufacturers in product improvements and color design. He lectures across the country on numerous topics involving the decorating and design field and has exhibited and demonstrated in many European and US cities.