id Tips: Colours For Your Home

Designed by | Nu Infinity

The importance of colours to create the right mood and outlook for your interior spaces cannot be emphasised enough. However, it is not simply about choosing one or two colours. When it comes to styling your home with colours, you would need to find a key palette that can bring out the ambience and look you want.

Creating a colour palette

Designed by | Nu Infinity

With many varieties of colours to choose from, you wonder how you are ever going to select one that works well for your home. Here are the basic steps that will help set you off in the right direction of creating a functional and beautiful colour palette for your home.

What’s Your Favourite Color?
Always begin with a single colour that you really like. According to stylist and HGTV host Emily Henderson, the easiest way to choose the colour you love most is to think about what you want to wear the most. “It’s pretty simple. What are your “go to” colours? Think about what you buy, what you stare at in magazines, and what you pin the most. However, if you wear black solely because it’s flattering, then disregard that!” Emily advises in her blog.

Make a Moodboard

From here you can easily put together a mood board that will help you determine the kind of colour scheme that would fit into your spaces. Include swatches of your chosen paint or wallpaper, add images of the furniture and accessories as well as samples of window treatment fabric, the carpet and so. See how they look together. Keep each element in proportion to the area of the room it’ll cover and you’ll be able to get a really clear idea of the finished effect.

Find The Right Colour Combinations
Look at your mood board. At this point, you will discover from the images which colours or tones work with the key colour. Generally there are four colour schemes that you can use as reference:

• Monochromatic: uses tone on tone of the same colour with the addition of white or black to lighten or darken the colour.
• Analogous: uses colours that appear next to each other on the colour wheel.
• Contrast: uses a triad of contrasting colours.

If you want to play it safe, you can build your palette with shades of the same hue. Go light for large areas; stronger colours should only be applied to smaller forms as accents. Some designers advise to choose colours for the living room first and let that set the theme for the rest of the house.

It’s also ideal to use both warm (oranges, yellows, browns, reds, and pinks) and cool colours (blues, greens, and purples) to create a balanced room. “A well-balanced inviting room will have a combination of both warm and cool tones, though not necessarily equal. In general cool tones are more calming and warm tones are more exciting,” says Emily.

Choose Your Neutrals

Designed by | Nice Style

In any colour palette, neutrals (whites, greys, beiges) play an important role to bring your key colours together. First, choose a tone of white with the same undertone as your key colour. There are cool whites and warm whites – pick one that would work best with your chosen colour.

Next, choose a common neutral colour – this works best in the connected areas of your home, like open spaces, hallways, and lofts. Again, you can choose between warm neutrals or cool ones. Usually, a warm neutral will complement cool undertones, like blue, green, or purple while a cool neutral will complement warm undertones, like red, orange, and yellow.

Colours and style

Designed by | Nu Infinity

Colours are actually a key aspect in bringing together the style you are going for. For instance, if you are have decided on the Urban Chic style, the palette will need bolder colours than Warm Minimalist or Tropical Contemporary styles which will work better with neutrals as their dominant tones.

However if you like fashionable colours like neon pink or lime yellow and you also want to create a Classic interior, all is not lost. Just use these colours sparingly (for example as a small accent colour) and choose quieter or washed down versions of pink or yellow. The bottom line is, keep everything harmonious. In fact these off-colours can add a wonderful surprise element which will give your house a sense of personality and add a bright note to it. Just remember not to overdo it.

Colour Placement

Designed by | Nu Infinity

Having the perfect colour scheme is just the beginning. You must also know where to place them. Jackie Hernandez, a decorator based in the US shows us where to use these five common colours:

• White
  Use for trim, cabinetry, furniture, and ceilings or anything else you want to paint white, even the walls.  Stick with one white colour and always keep some on hand for touch-ups.
• Neutral
  Jackie calls this the default neutral, because it is your default in all open, connected spaces of your home. It is also the back up when you don’t know what colour to paint a space. Works great for small spaces like closets and bathrooms, where you don’t want to choose another colour.
• Bold Colour
  This is the colour you use when you want to create a big WOW factor. However, a bold colour is hard to pull off in open areas.  It works best in separate rooms or as an accent wall only.
• Second Colour
  This colour is great for any room.  It isn’t as bold, so it is easier to live with.  It works best in separate rooms or for a more subtle accent wall.
• Accent Colour
  This colour should be used sparingly on walls or intentionally to create a certain feeling in a room.

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