What's Your Ideal Home Color Palette?
What if you could blink your eyes and suddenly have an updated space?
What does your new room look like? Spend a minute imagining it and looking around at everything.
Is there a colorful scene before you, or are the walls a crisp, clean white?
Do you see more lighting or soft textures in your room?
Are there layers of patterns and colors, or do you imagine something more neutral?
How does this space feel to you? Soothing, uplifting, exciting, relaxing?
I know I know, so many questions. As a designer, I do ask my clients a lot of questions. And one of the most important ones is about the ‘feel’ of their dream room.
The answer to this one is important because it gives us a direction for the design. If the desired feeling is ‘relaxed’, we’ll look at soft colors and textures in pale neutral tones. If the client says ‘energetic’, then clear, primary colors might be right. If their answer is ‘quirky’, we’ll play with the secondary colors in off-beat shades.
Colors have definite associations for most of us, and general consensus says that yellow equals happiness, green equals relaxation, red equals passion. But of course these aren’t true for everyone, so each of us needs to define these emotional associations for ourselves. Then we can use color intentionally and strategically to lay some emotional groundwork in the design of our homes.
Living Room Before
This living room project started backwards, in a way. My clients knew what they didn’t want, which was the yellow walls. They also didn’t want the bulky brown-ness that had accumulated in this space.
What they did want was a feeling of clarity, both in quantity of stuff and in line. They also wanted a welcoming and comfortable feeling mixed with a modern, tailored look. We focused on their inspiration piece in a new way, and brought some of those colors into the room via the furnishings.
Living Room After
Once we fell in love with those cool greens and grays of the upholstery combined with the warm wood of the original floor, we needed a paint color for the walls. We landed on a warm white to balance the coolness of the furniture and to give a fresh, crisp backdrop to the entire room.
Are you thinking about transforming your space in a similar fashion with color? Are you looking for some extra inspiration?
You’ve just imagined your dream room. That’s the first step towards achieving your design goal.
To help you get another step closer to your dream room, I created my Color Mixer Quiz.
This quiz will give you a palette of 7 colors that you can use for any decorating project. Pair two colors together in one room, then add a third or fourth color to the mix in another room. Mix and match as you please because I’ve already curated these colors to look great together in so many ways: on walls, furniture, rugs or curtains. I filtered out thousands of colors so you don’t feel daunted by this process.
I want you to feel inspired and empowered!
Take my 2-minute Color Mixer Quiz and see what you get. Take it again if you want to try for a different result. It’s always free, and you’ll also get a style suggestion and extra color info in three follow-up emails.
I hope this helps you think about color in a new way.
Until Next Time,
Nan
About Nan
Interior designer focused on helping people turn their homes into their sanctuaries without the pain of renovating. I’ve been working as a professional designer since 1995 and one thing I love about interior design is how it can evoke a mood and create whatever feeling you want in your space. In that way, it’s kind of magical.
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