Color. Color is what makes this world so grand to live in. Colors can also make or break a room. When trying to pin down a color scheme for a room there are a few ways to do it right, but loads of ways to do it wrong. Here are a few tips and tricks to make sure your room’s color scheme looks like it walked out of a design catalog.
1- Inspiration: Find something that inspires you to use as the foundation of the color scheme. It could be a painting, a pillow, or even your favorite bottle of merlot. If you use this tactic, be sure you don’t take the inspiration too literally. The last thing you want is for it to look like your inspiration piece invaded the room. Subtlety is key.
2- Your Closet: Odds are you buy clothes in colors you like and look good in. So go browse through your closet and see what themes pop up. If your closet is mostly neutrals and muted tones, you should probably keep lime green and electric blue out of your living room. But then again, we should all probably keep lime green and electric blue out of our living rooms.
3- Use Math: There’s an old designer’s trick known as the 60-30-10 rule. It doesn’t matter if you cheated off that cute boy to pass algebra or if he cheated off you, anyone can use this formula so don’t let the numbers scare you. Sixty percent of your room should be covered with your dominant color, 30% with a secondary color, and 10% with an accent color.
4- Size Matters: When designing for a smaller room people have a tendency to try to brighten it up with lots of whites to make it feel bigger. Sadly, at the end of the day a small room is still a small room. Instead of fighting the limits of your room, embrace them. Let the big rooms in your house have the bright, light, and airy feel and use warm rich colors in smaller rooms to let them wrap you up like a cozy sweater.
5- Old Faithful: If all else fails and your room winds up looking like Liberace and Larry the Cable Guy tag teamed the design efforts, it’s time to dust off the color wheel. It’s not as fun or artsy, but the color wheel can tell you which colors go together.
The colors will define a room for better or worse. Finding the right color scheme isn’t something everyone can do, so let the design team at FIFTEENTH AND HOME help you find the perfect colors to fill your home.