Give your home space a technicolour dreamcoat of hues
WHENit comes to decorating, many people are Crayola colour-phobic. I understand why; if not used properly, colours, especially bright ones, can make your living room look like a kindergarten, or worse, a Marvel comic.
Follow these four tips to keep cheery colours in check:
1 Use colour as an accent, not a focus
I have several clients who are colouraverse – they like rooms that are all white, grey and/or neutral. Recently, I have nudged a couple of them to add hints of colour to give their spaces a lift. My reason: if you keep a room all neutral without any colour pops, you have nothing to guide your eye through the space – your room ends up looking like one boring beige blob.
Adding small pops of colour is like accessorising an outfit – think coloured earrings or a necklace on a woman, a colourful tie or pocket scarf on a man.
Try small strokes of colour, not huge ones. In general, I like to have three to five colourful elements peppered throughout a room.
Don’t glop them all together. And remember, a book jacket, flower or candle can add just as much colour as a throw, pillow or tray.
2 Let colour flow
In the same way that you want to spread pops of colour throughout a room, you want to carry those pops of colour throughout your house, particularly if your house has an open plan. You should always consider how colour flows from one room to another. If your living room opens on to your foyer, use pops of the same colour to unite them. Blue pillows and a blue lamp in your living room? Try a blue vase on your front hall table.
3 Use a paint deck for guidance
Paint decks usually show a gradation of colour from light to bright (or dark). When you choose a bright accent colour for your room, complement it with items that represent the full spectrum of that colour, just as you would see on a paint deck. By layering the lighter shades of a colour, you make the brightness of that colour less pronounced. For example, you might layer a mint green pillow with a Kermit the Frog-green pillow on a sofa.
4 Ground colours with black, brown or grey
Any colour in the spectrum looks good – and more sophisticated – when it is offset by strong, dark colours like black, dark brown or grey. – The Washington Post