Color Your Space!

Posted on 12. Apr, 2010 by Lounge Lady in Home&Interiors

Colour has always played a big part in influencing our emotions. We all have colour personalities and our preferred colours say a lot about our temperaments. The colours in a room can determine whether it feels relaxing, exciting or cold.

Giving your room a colour scheme doesn’t necessarily mean that every object has to be a shade of the chosen colour(s).  It could just be reflected in a few feature pieces in a room. Soft furnishings like cushions, curtains or lampshades are a quick and inexpensive way of adding splashes of colour. When choosing colours for your room, you could begin with an object you really like and plan your colour scheme around it. Alternatively, collect images that inspire you (these could be clips from magazines) and use them as a guide.

Here are a few tips for decorating with specific colours:

• RED is assertive, exciting and passionate. Because of its boldness, a little goes a long way. You can use accents of red to call attention to a particular feature or object in a room. Combining it with white gives the room a fresher, more feminine feel and pairing it with green make it look brighter.

• ORANGE is warm, energetic and lively. Paler shades are a good choice for rooms that don’t receive much sunlight like north facing rooms. Orange works very well when paired with black, dark grey or dark blue.

• YELLOW is radiant, cheerful and uplifting. It helps to make dark spaces feel more welcoming, especially dark hallways or corridors. For a fresh modern look, it can be combined with white and black.

• GREEN is fresh and relaxing. Decorating a room with green plants brings nature into the room and instantly infuses it with life.

• BLUE is cool and collected. Pale shades can be used to cool down a room that is full of light like a south facing room. Blues and whites are perfect together if you want to create a crisp look. Pairing it with orange also gives beautiful results.

• PURPLE is rich and regal. It works well as an accent colour but can be overwhelming when used in large quantities. Touches of yellow and gold look great against intense purple. Lighter shades like lavender and lilac are lovely when combined with white and pale shades of green.

• BLACK is elegant. A touch of black provides contrast and definition in a room. Since it absorbs a lot light, it is essential to introduce some reflective surfaces in a room with predominantly black interiors. White is its natural partner but bright colours like white, gold, orange and lime also look nice with black when used sparingly.

• WHITE is clean and luxurious. It gives the feeling of light and space. To prevent a room looking cold and institutional, try adding different textures. Touches of strong colours such as red, orange and deep blue can create stunning effects. White also works well with neutral colours but avoid very light browns as they can look dirty.

• BROWN is warm and natural and it has a stabilizing effect. Brown is the colour we call wood and because it is natural, it goes with almost any colour. Dark browns can be used to replace black for a more casual look but on a large scale, they are best used in a room with lots of light so that they don’t look black.

Tip: When choosing and matching colours, be sure to do so in plenty of natural light because the appearance of colours can be altered in artificial light. Also, when painting a room in a new colour, try it on a small patch first as paint could to dry to a few shades lighter or darker than it appears in the container.

Happy Decorating!

Image – gettyimages

Writer – Feyi Ogundeji  (A Physiotherapist by profession  but she has a deep passion for design and she is probably best known for her handicrafts)