Welcoming Your Home to the World of Color

By Luke Styles –

Choosing the right balance of colors for a room is important; it will set the mood of the room as well as the entire house. There should be a sense of continuity throughout the house and one approach to achieving this is to concentrate on just a handful of colors, maybe only two, and then introduce others into the mix as accents. This will provide the continuity element whilst at the same time allowing the various separate rooms to express their own individual personalities.

Neutral bases

Don’t be afraid of neutral colors, as you can go for these in combination with a single accent color. Practically everything will go with turquoise for instance, and one effective strategy is to create rooms based on grey, navy, beige, and white and then add a few touches of ‘pop’ colors on top for the accent. Linen, wood, and clay are natural neutral materials that can be used very effectively in this context.

Adding accents

Color can be distributed around each room in small additions, such as with lamps and other accessories, to create a sense of rhythm. There should be a location for the eyes to rest wherever you look, such as a bowl of fruit, a vase, or a cushion, and positioning lamps at key locations can create subtle differences in color and shade.

Shutters

Installing attractive shutters can also provide an effective focus for a room, either as a means of adding an accent color or accentuating the prevailing color scheme by bathing the space in natural light. Shutters, as eco-friendly window dressings, are becoming increasingly popular and can help reduce your carbon footprint.

Safe pairings

Black and white always goes well together, creating a base platform on which you can then introduce an accent color such as orange, lime, or turquoise. Orange can be teamed with navy or pink in the accent, or lime green with zesty yellow. Grey, surprisingly, makes a perfect base color because it goes so well with a wide range of much stronger accents such as yellow. You can experiment with many different unique shades and colors on the market.

To steer clear of

There aren’t any hard and fast rules for choosing colors for home décor, but mauve is by common consent one to definitely avoid, and the red-black combination is also dicey. Red is a daring and provocative color, but when it’s teamed up with black, the combination can be reminiscent of a 1950s speakeasy, and a softer mink brown would be preferable.

Endless choice

It wasn’t so many years ago that the only choice for wall decoration was washed-out magnolia wallpaper or paint. Now there’s a fantastic range of possibilities to suit absolutely any taste. Plain or patterned wallpaper is often preferred to hide flaws in plasterwork, and can be painted over rather than torn off when you grow tired of it. Floor coverings come in all shapes, textures, and colors and there’s a growing trend for polished, bare boards.

Once you’ve grasped a few of the basic principles of color, planning and implementing a color scheme for the home is fun and easy. Playing around and relying on instinct should also not be underrated, and interior designers often do just that.

Luke Styles is a reputable freelance writer with a passion for helping others. He is often found writing in his garden studio whilst watching the world go by.