Today we’d like to introduce you to Max@letstalkcolor.com Max Ruthven.
Hi max@letstalkcolor.com, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I moved to the United States from South Africa in January 2001 after being recruited as a nurse for a two-year contract in Los Angeles. Although I could speak English, it was not my native language, and aside from studying English itself, I had never studied any subject in English. Los Angeles felt enormous and intimidating at first, but it became an incredible experience. I often say I felt like a working tourist. I was right there! Hollywood and Beverly Hills -places I just saw on TV and occasionally found myself working in the OR with celebrities as my patients. So surreal. It was a completely different world from the one I had known.
And I realized very quickly that it’s true. It “almost ” never rains in Southern California!
My husband came with me, and when my contract ended, I extended it for six months because I wasn’t ready to leave. By the end of that extension, we had made the much bigger decision to stay in America.
We eventually chose Austin after my husband heard wonderful things about the city from colleagues. I continued working in medicine, first as an OR nurse at the Heart Hospital of Austin and later for a perfusion company performing autotransfusion, also known as cell saver. I was on call, and as Austin grew and traffic became less predictable, reaching the hospital quickly became increasingly difficult. One day, my husband suggested that perhaps it was time for me to leave medicine and do something else.
The problem was that I had absolutely no idea what that “something else” would be.
A friend suggested home staging because I had always loved working on our own homes and had an eye for putting things together. I became a certified home stager and immediately wanted to learn more. That led to interior design courses and eventually to the subject that would completely change my career: color.
The turning point came from my own home. We bought a house on Lake Travis in 2010, and I hired a professional color consultant because I wanted to get the paint colors right from the beginning. At the time, I did not understand how deeply color is connected to architecture, fixed finishes, light, materials, and everything else in a space. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with the advice I received. By the time I realized the colors were not working, repainting the entire house was simply too expensive.
That experience stayed with me.
In August 2012, my husband and I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro via the Lemosho Route. We wanted a challenge we could work toward together, but I came home with something unexpected: the decision to build a business around color.
There is a great deal of time to think while climbing a mountain—and while traveling to and from one. Somewhere during that trip, I became determined to understand why color works when it works and why it does not when it does not. While sitting in an airport waiting for a connecting flight, I came up with the name Let’s Talk Color and bought the domain right then and there.
When we returned home, I began searching for professional color education, and I have never really stopped. I studied color consulting, color psychology, architectural color at Levels I and II, and later became involved with color forecasting to better understand how trends develop and influence the built environment.
The more I learn about color, the more I realize how much there is still to learn. Color keeps me humble. It changes with light, materials, architecture, proportion, geography, and the people experiencing it. It goes much deeper than choosing a paint color because we like its name or because someone declared it the color of the year.
Today, I bring roughly 15 years of hands-on experience in home staging, interior design, and architectural color consulting to my work. That experience has been built in real homes and real spaces, working directly with homeowners, designers, contractors, and property managers.
My work continues to evolve. I am expanding further into multifamily and non-residential color consulting while continuing to work with homeowners. I am also developing educational e-books that teach people how to think about color rather than simply telling them which colors to choose.
I can give someone a paint color, but I would much rather teach them how to look at a space, understand what they are seeing, and make a thoughtful decision. In many ways, that is what my career has become: not simply choosing color but teaching people how to see it.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It definitely has not always been a smooth road, but I think some of the challenges are also what made me better at what I do.
One of the biggest adjustments for me was going from medicine into entrepreneurship. Nursing is a very structured profession. There are protocols, procedures, and situations where there really is a right and a wrong answer. Color doesn’t quite work that way.
There are certainly principles that guide good color decisions, but there is no proverbial black-and-white rulebook. Color is incredibly dynamic. You can understand the theory and make an educated prediction, but then you have to see what happens in the actual space. Natural and artificial light, architecture, flooring, countertops, furnishings, surrounding colors, and even geography can change what you perceive. That has probably been one of the greatest lessons of my career: expertise doesn’t mean pretending you can control every variable. It means knowing what to look for, understanding why something is happening, and knowing how to respond to it.
Building a business around color has its own challenges because people sometimes underestimate how complex it is. We live in a world of Pinterest boards, social media recommendations, “perfect neutral” lists, and colors of the year. It can make choosing color look very simple. But a paint color that looks beautiful in someone else’s photograph may have very little relevance to your own home. Part of my job has been helping people understand the difference between liking a color and choosing a color that actually works in context.
Then, of course, COVID was a significant challenge. My business was built around hands-on, in-person consultations. I needed to be inside people’s homes, looking at their materials, their architecture, and their light. Suddenly, people’s homes were exactly where I couldn’t go. Like so many small-business owners, I had to adapt and rethink how I could use my knowledge and experience.
Entrepreneurship itself has also been a learning experience. When you own a small business, you aren’t just doing the work you love. You are also the marketer, administrator, scheduler, educator, problem solver, and sometimes the person chasing an invoice! I don’t think I fully appreciated that when I started.
But perhaps the most important challenge has been learning to stay curious. After all these years, color still surprises me. I don’t think I will ever reach a point where I say, “I’ve mastered color.” The more I learn, the more I understand how much context matters.
Color keeps me humble, and I actually think that is a very good thing. It keeps me learning.
As you know, we’re big fans of Max Ruthven LLC | Architectural Color Consulting. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Max Ruthven LLC | Architectural Color Consulting is about helping people make better color decisions by looking beyond the paint chip.
I specialize in architectural color, which means I consider color as part of the entire environment rather than as an isolated decorating decision. Architecture, natural and artificial light, flooring, stone, countertops, cabinetry, roofing, surrounding materials, proportion, and even the landscape can influence how a color is perceived. A beautiful color is not necessarily the right color for a particular space.
That idea – “Context” – is what defines my work.
I don’t believe in walking into someone’s home or property and simply announcing what colors they should use. I want to understand what is already there, what needs to remain, how the space is used, what the architecture is asking for, and what the client is ultimately trying to accomplish.
My work includes interior and exterior residential color consulting, and I am increasingly expanding into multifamily and non-residential projects. I particularly enjoy the complexity of larger architectural projects because color has to work at a different scale. It isn’t simply about choosing attractive colors; it’s about understanding architecture, permanent materials, visual hierarchy, repetition, surroundings, and how the property will be experienced as a whole.
I’m also moving more deeply into education. I’m currently developing a series of educational e-books around an approach I call **Color in Context**. Rather than giving people lists of “best paint colors,” I want to teach them how to evaluate their own spaces, understand what they’re seeing, and make thoughtful color decisions with greater confidence.
Ultimately, I don’t want my work to be known for one particular palette or aesthetic. I want it to be known for thoughtful decisions. I don’t believe every home should look the same, every building should follow the latest trend, or everyone should like the same colors.
**Good color should belong to the place it is in.**
That is what architectural color consulting means to me.
What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
I would say professional integrity. I believe in being punctual, communicating clearly, giving honest opinions, and respecting my clients’ time just as I expect them to respect mine. I do not fluff things or tell people what they want to hear simply to make a decision easier.
I am also extremely diligent. I do not want to leave a client with a color palette they do not understand. Before I leave, I make sure they know why I chose a particular direction and how it relates to the architecture, lighting, materials, and overall feeling of the space.
This is not a hobby to me, and I do not run my business like one. I take the work, my clients’ investment, and the responsibility they place in me very seriously.
Pricing:
- * Starting prices for residential color consultations are published on my website because I believe clients should have clear information before contacting me. * Commercial and multifamily projects are priced individually after I review the scope, number of buildings or spaces, surfaces involved, documentation required, and overall complexity. * A thoughtful color direction involves much more than selecting attractive paint colors. Pricing reflects the research, evaluation, coordination, and level of detail required to create a cohesive, usable color plan.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://letstalkcolor.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maxletstalkcolor/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LetsTalkColor/
- Other: https://substack.com/@letstalkcolor
