Use of Color in Interior Design for Your Home Style

Use of Color in Interior Design

One of the joys of decorating is that it provides an opportunity to experiment with color and decorative styles while giving you a means of expressing your personal taste and preferences. In the “Use of Color in Interior Design” article, you will get interesting information on this topic. Let’s start with the first chapters:

Creating your own color combinations and choosing styles does, however, need thought and consideration of other factors before you make final decisions.

Understanding Color for Use of Color in Interior Design

It is not necessary to understand the physics behind the derivation of color in order to appreciate why you like particular colors or to determine a color scheme when decorating. Rather, you need a working knowledge of how different colors are related and affect each other for Use of Color in Interior Design.

Applying Colors

Defining aims: Decide whether or not you want to achieve a certain result with your color choice in a room, and the sort of mood you want to create. Select the main color with these needs in mind – restful colors in a bedroom, for example, or warm, inviting hues in a living area.

Evoking emotions: Colors produce different emotional responses in people. If you want to make a statement or attract attention, use a strong, hot color. Choose warm colors to be welcoming and comforting. Select strong, cold colors for a calming rather than a stimulating effect. Cool colors are invigorating but soothing at the same time.

Combining colors: Base your scheme around one main color. Then consider whether other colors should form a range of consecutive hues, be clashing or contrasting complementary colors, or be combined to create a more complex scheme altogether.

Learning The Language Of Color

All colors in the spectrum are derived from the three primary colors – red, yellow, and blue. Secondary colors are created by mixing two primaries: yellow and blue to make green, for example. All other colors are known as tertiary colors and are formed from a variety of combinations of primaries and secondaries. Shades and tones are produced by lightening or darkening colors with the addition of black or white.

Relating colors: Primary colors lie at equal intervals around a “color wheel.” On either side of each primary color is a range of toning, adjacent hues. Complementary colors fall directly opposite each other on the color wheel.

Combine Colors

Some people have an instinctive feel for how colors can be combined successfully within an extensive scheme. But you can soon learn whether colors contrast with or complement each other. Either alternative can provide the basis for a highly successful color scheme.

Contrasting Shades for Use of Color in Interior Design

Juxtaposing light and dark: Using particularly light colors alongside much darker shades can provide good definition between the various surfaces in a room. Here, the light lemon of the alcove and the pale woodwork create a neat finish against dark blue walls.

Combining Opposites

Using complementary colors: Red and green work well together because they are complementary colors – that is, they sit directly opposite each other on the color wheel. The color scheme that is featured here also includes the use of yellow, a contrasting color.

Using Adjacent Colors

Striking a balance with related colors: Contrasting colors emphasize features, but if they are adjacent hues they also unite a room. The red walls and window link this scheme, despite a great difference in wall colors. The vibrant yellow on the baseboard contrasts with the pale yellow wall while relating to it.

Choosing Colors

Following instincts: Choose basic colors within a scheme according to your preferences. Once you have chosen these basics, you can make slight variations in shades to suit particular requirements.

Harmonizing a finish: Choose colors of the same intensity within a scheme to create a restful feel within a room. The greater the difference in intensity, the more colors will tend to stand out. You may wish to highlight a feature in a room using this effect.

Mixing complementaries: Combine a large area of one color with its complementary color, which will have the effect of softening the original shade. You can also use this method to take the edge off vibrant hues so that they lie more comfortably together.

Color Scheming for Use of Color in Interior Design

Choosing a color scheme is exciting, but it can also be a little daunting. You may find it easy to select the main color but more difficult to finalize the smaller details, although these can often make or break the finished effect.

Finding Inspiration

Inspiration comes naturally and easily to some people, but most of us need a little help in developing our artistic flair, or even in defining our own personal preferences. Try to identify a few key areas to help you before you start to make decisions about decorating.

Looking Around You

• When selecting colors, you may find that inspiration is close at hand, so look around you before searching farther afield. Existing decorations Examine why your existing decorative scheme does not suit you, and to what extent the color scheme needs to be changed
• Magazines: Flick quickly through magazines to see which pages and images attract you and which colors they feature.
• Paintings: Use paintings and prints that you have bought in the past as reminders of what appeals to you visually.

Looking at Photographs

Browse through a photograph album, identifying favorite vacation pictures. Make a note of those colors that appeal to you in landscape photographs to give you an indication of your color preferences.

Out Trying Technology

• There are many computer programs available to help with home design and decoration. You can try out a range of different color schemes on screen before making any decisions or doing any work.
• Considering lighting: You need to be aware of the lighting in a room, since this will affect colors. Study both natural light conditions and artificial lighting before selecting a color scheme.
• Choosing accessories: Pick out the decorative accessories for a room before completing the color scheme if there is an object you particularly like or find inspiring.

Seeking Help

• Observing friends homes: Although inspiration is an individual experience, you can learn a lot by looking at the color schemes in friends’ homes. Try combining ideas from several sources.
• Consulting professionals: If you visit a decorating outlet, ask their experts for advice on color scheming. This service is often free, and you may find it extremely useful.
• Visiting showrooms: Most large outlets build showrooms to display entire rooms. Here you may observe the work of interior designers.

Using Swatches

Painting Lining Paper: Make a reasonably sized color swatch by painting a piece of lining paper. Stick this on a wall temporarily so that you can observe a color as the light changes throughout the day.

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