Pops of Color Come to Life in This Cheery House

Asking Terri Shanahan to pick a favorite color is like asking her to pick a favorite child — impossible. “I recently saw a quote that said, ‘My favorite color is rainbow.’ That pretty much sums me up,” she says. “I love so many colors. Why stop at one or two?” When Terri, a blogger, antiques dealer and grandmother of six, and her husband, Bob, bought this Camas, WA, Dutch Colonial Revival in 2014, Terri pulled 10 Pantone chips — the just-right blue, red, yellow, green, etc. — and carried them around as inspiration while shopping for items for the house.

Her kaleidoscopic approach to decorating isn’t anything new: All three homes that she and Bob have shared throughout their 40-year marriage have been filled to the brim with vibrant pieces. But as much as Terri loves a shock of color, she does have her limits. “I don’t love bright furniture against bright walls,” she says. So she painted every wall in this home Ultra Pure White by Behr. And she took the blank backdrop even further by hanging thick white cotton drapes, choosing lots of white light fixtures, and mixing in a few white pieces of furniture so the spectrum of colors really pops. The result? “It feels like a playground for adults in here.”

Terri and Bob Shanahan at their front door — the only blue one on the block. They painted the siding Casper White by Miller Paint and the front door Blue Burst by Valspar. 

Having a nearly all-white background lets Bob and Terri Shanahan do color in a big way. For more than a decade, Terri has collected candy-hued glass swag pendants — mainly from Lounge Lizard, a vintage store in Portland, OR — and when she and Bob moved to this house, she hired light designer Scott Schiesel to turn them into a single knockout fixture. The dining set consists of a pine table the couple has owned for years and chairs from an antiques store, both painted Ultra Pure White by Behr. Terri reupholstered the chairs’ seats in white vinyl from Jo-Ann. On the wall behind the table is a plexiglass artist’s palette she found in the trash.

“As soon as I saw this blue velvet sofa, I was like, Bingo,” says Terri of the three-seater from Perch. “I knew that color would be perfect in the mix.” That includes two pieces brought from her old house: a gold velvet thrift store armchair (Bob painted the legs white) and a hot pink slipper chair scored on clearance at World Market. The 12-foot-wide pine china cabinet, also from their previous home, holds Terri’s collection of glass and ceramics, which are arranged vertically by hue. A multicolor wool rug from Annie Selke’s Dash & Albert ties all the shades together.