Spice Up Your Towel Rack!

By Author: Fiona Young
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Yes, towels are functional. We all want soft, warm, fluffy towels to wrap around us when we come out of the shower. But you don't have to use the same towels all the time. By changing your towels with your mood, the season or the day of the week, you can give your bathroom a whole new look and feel.

If you mix towels of the dominant color of your bathroom, with white towels, you have a clean, pristine, fresh look. If you mix them with black ones then you have a trendier, ‘cooler look (and much more practical than white if you have kids in the house!)

For a subdued and harmonious look, buy towels of various shades of the same color. A friend of mine has a white bathroom with occasional stripes of pinky-purple in the tiles. On the towel rack when I visit her (alone) I find a selection of 14 towels in all shades of purple and mauve imaginable. It looks gorgeous! I tell her it's always my challenge to work out how to use 14 towels in the one or two days I stay with her.

So whatever the color already there, vary it and see what combinations you can come up with.

Alternatively, ...
... still on the concept of varying the shades, if you do not like the basic color you can work to change that with towels. Let's say you have bought a new house and there is some green in the floor, countertops and tiles that you do not really like. You can buy maybe just one towel, or even a little hand towel, that is close to that green. The all the other towels can be a green or move into a turquoises or teals that blend closely with the original color, but are more to your liking. Using a color wheel can help you get an idea of just what colors blend with yours, and which you like and dislike.

You can find a really good color wheel at http://www.ficml.org/jemimap/style/color/wheel.html that lets you see the colors as you hover over the wheel with your mouse.

Mind you this it is not always possible to undo unfortunate design decisions, but you can reduce them. In the first house of my own the bathroom had bright green floors, a totally different color of green bathroom suite, the tiles around the bath were yet another green with yellow stripes, and to top it all off the walls that were not tiled were papered with green paper with yellow ducks. It was horrendous! Nothing could rescue that bathroom, and since it was a company house I was not in a position to do much to it. I just hung a dark green shower curtain and matching dark green towels, bath mat and toilet seat cover, to hide as much of the other multitude of greens as I could. It didn't solve the problem, but the towels definitely helped lessen the damage. Hopefully you are in a better position.

If you like color and want something that stands out, you can go with complementary colors. These are colors directly opposite each other on the color wheel. This can give a very lively, interesting look but be careful how you do it.

For a while, many years ago orange and purple together were the rage, and in reality they are not quite complementary colors. Orange's complementary color is blue and purple's complementary color is green. But orange and purple are discordant colors, meaning they do not usually go together.

I saw a wonderful combination of the two in a restaurant. It had bright tangerine orange with a dark, deep, almost black purple. I also saw a bedroom that looked awful with a light orange bedspread and light, bright purple curtains. I do not know how anyone could sleep in that room.

The idea with discordant or complementary colors is to make one color deep and the other light or bright. Towels are a wonderful way to do this, as if you get tired of the combination it is so easy just to change the towels and have a more soothing scheme for a while.

Towels come in an enormous array of colors and shades. There are lovely velour ones that look like velvet. There are fluffy ones, jacquard ones, towels with lace or fringes, and of course, every pattern under the sun.

Try some patterned or striped towels and then pick up the colors in solid colored towels. Again, easy to switch and change.

It is also an inexpensive way to decide what you want to do in the way of paint, flooring and countertops in a bathroom you are redesigning. Try your color combinations out with towels and get a feel for how much of what color you want to have - and once it is done, you already have the towels to accent it all.

So be daring. Look at all the great towels selections online, pick what you like the best, and build a whole new look with deep pile, smooth velour or fluffy Egyptian towels. Add luxury to your bathroom with color.
About the Author Submitted by Fiona Young. Fiona has an interior design background and writes towel reviews for www.monogrammed-linens.com which offers a full range of all types of towels from the best manufacturers, designers and stores. Fiona can be reached at fiona@monogrammed-linens.com