If you’re impressed by the color and imagination of William Diamond and Anthony Baratta’s work underfoot, you should be. These two master decorators create some of the most interesting floors around.
Flip through their new book, “Diamond Baratta Design,” written with Dan Shaw (Bulfinch, 272 pages, $55), and you’ll see a white floor painted with black and cobalt Dalmatian spots, each applied with an eye dropper for an organic look.
You’ll see a dining room floor painted to resemble a Pennsylvania Dutch hex sign and a periwinkle blue floor stenciled with whales, lighthouses and mermaids.
And, of course, you’ll see floors of shimmering ebony, turquoise and their favorite, pure white.
In all this, Benjamin Moore’s porch and deck enamel is their friend.
“It holds up phenomenally,” Diamond says. “It’s great for children’s rooms because if something spills, you just wipe it up.”
But the real reason they love deck enamel is that it extends color to the distant corners of a room, lifting and lightening a decorating scheme.
“It makes a room light, happy, reflective,” Baratta says. “There’s a sheen to a painted floor, and we like the way light bounces off it.”
Which is not to say that Diamond and Baratta eschew wood. They just aren’t content to leave it alone. They like to stain wood floors so they resemble marquetry and create pattern.
As for rugs, “you name it, we’ve done it,” Diamond says. Using traditional American materials — hooking, braiding and needlepointing — he and Baratta commission rugs depicting motifs their clients love: dogs, firehouses, even old motel signs.
Their very loyal braided rugmaker, a woman in New Hampshire, rented a school gymnasium when she was working on a 60-foot-long braided rug commissioned for a hallway.
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And for Baratta’s New York apartment she turned menswear fabrics — camelhair, tweed and gray flannel — into a rug with a modern pattern of concentric squares.
But floors are just part of Diamond and Baratta’s genius. Here are some other ways they bring a fearless sense of color to a room:
– Fabric to the rescue. Practically allergic to Sheetrock, they take away the newness of a room by covering the walls with everything from felt to velvet, linen to billiard cloth.
“Fabric has a more intense color than paint, and it ages better,” Baratta says. “Fading, dust: It all reacts nicely and gives the fabric an interesting patina.”
Adds Diamond, “Fabric makes a room feel homey. Even if you’re using solid colors, it creates a calming clothiness that’s especially important in modern interiors.”
– The right white. Though they’re known for bold and brilliant color, what makes their schemes work is a liberal dose of white — on the trim, the floor, the mantel.
“It’s the backbone of what we do,” Diamond says.