When moving to a new place, many people are quick to unpack and put items wherever they will fit just so the space can feel like home. However, without considering interior design aspects, the space can lack harmony and emotion. Sure, your home might feel comfortable enough, but you can elevate the comfort of your living space further by keeping interior design in mind. One of the most significant parts of designing a cozy and visually appealing space is colors.
The colors you choose for your home can bring it together while evoking certain feelings and making the space easy to look at. Yet, not just any colors will do. To help transform your home from a dull, dreary look to a cozy, beautiful place, you need to choose colors that go together and show off the best features of each room. The color hacks below will help you accomplish that.
1. Familiarize Yourself With the Color Wheel
The color wheel can be used to find matching colors for any type of design. It shows relationships between colors, allowing you to select color combinations that go well together quickly. Most people keep it safe by choosing colors next to each other on the color wheel, such as blue, blue-green, and green. Since colors next to each other are similar, they’re often easy on the eyes.
If you want to create a more unique design, consider using colors on opposite sides of the color wheel, known as complementary colors. Even though complementary colors are pairs of very different colors, they can make a space more interesting if used correctly. The two colors should complement each other without taking over the whole room. For example, a bright orange chair will pop next to a dark blue wall, so that’s a great way to design your space if you want the chair to be the focal point.
2. Start With the Main Areas of Your Home
If you’re working on designing every room of a house, it can be stressful to decide where to start. So, starting with the areas of your home that guests will see the most can help bring the whole design together. For example, the living room, dining room, and entryway are all spaces that should be thoughtfully designed since those are what guests will see first and where they will likely spend time.
Choose color schemes for those main rooms, and don’t be afraid to use bold colors that your friends and family will love. Then, use parts of those colors to decorate more private rooms, such as your bedroom or office. For example, if you use purple on the walls of your living room, add purple accents, such as small furniture pieces or decorations, to your other rooms. That way, there will be a consistent theme throughout your home while each room will still have a unique design.
3. Stick With Three Colors
Most room designs focus on only three colors at a time. Adding more than that can quickly make the space overwhelming and difficult to relax in. You should choose a main color, secondary color, and accent color. As you can probably guess, the main color takes up the majority of the room, such as the walls and large furniture pieces.
Then, the secondary color should appear frequently throughout the room but in smaller amounts, such as on an accent wall or smaller furniture items. Finally, the accent color can be used as random pops of color throughout the room, such as in wall art, pillows, or lamps. If none of the three colors you chose are neutral colors, it’s okay to sprinkle some white, gray, or black into the design to break up the colors a bit.
4. Use the 60-30-10 Rule for Color Balance
The 60-30-10 rule is a great way to ensure the colors of your room are balanced. Using the three colors you want to focus on, assign 60% of the room to the main color, 30% to the secondary color, and 10% to the accent color. It’s not an exact science, but keeping these numbers in mind can help you better ensure there’s a proper amount of each color.
An example would be painting a wall green (the main color) and having a pink couch (the secondary color). Then, you could sprinkle in gold decorations (the accent color), such as picture frames and a small lamp, to bring it all together. As long as the three colors you choose complement each other, using those percentages should help ensure you have color balance.
5. Match With Your Favorite Clothing Colors
When choosing colors for your clothes, you probably lean toward colors you look best in. You may even have a favorite color that appears on most of your clothing items. When you dress in colors you love and colors that flatter you, you likely feel your best, too. So, the same can be said for the colors you decorate your home with.
With interior design, you want to be surrounded by colors you love because they make you feel more comfortable. Those colors may also help you look your best, just like your clothes do. For example, if you wear a lot of denim, a navy-colored sofa will work well with your aesthetic, just like how the color of your jeans brings out the best in you. If there are colors you like but don’t wear every day, those hues could make good accent colors.
6. Have a Consistent Color Palette, But Use Different Textures
Sometimes, sticking to the same color palette for all your rooms may make your design feel too simple. Yet, adding more colors into the mix might seem like too much. So, to make the existing colors feel more interesting, try using different textures in your designs.
This could include putting contrasting fabric textures near each other or incorporating spikey plants into an otherwise smooth-looking room. If you don’t like the feel of various textures, try using furniture and decorations with color patterns that make them look textured. Don’t be afraid to get creative with your home design so you can create a one-of-a-kind look that you feel comfortable in.
7. Choose Colors Based on the Brightness of a Room
Consider a room’s lighting when settling on a color scheme. Some spaces will always be illuminated by sunlight, while certain areas may always be dark. Thus, the colors you use in a room may look different depending on the lighting. When a room is lit up, the colors you use are more vibrant, while they may appear duller and less intense if they’re always hidden in the shadows.
If you have a room with large windows, light is shining on the room’s colors most of the time. Any colors you use here will likely look bolder and more vibrant than usual. If you’re worried about the colors being too bright, use darker or duller colors in that room to ensure they don’t pop too much. You can use brighter colors in a dark corner of your room so they don’t get too drowned out by the shadows.
8. Put Dark Colors Near the Floor and Light Colors Up High
Decorating vertically can help a room look spacious and aesthetically pleasing. Keep the darker colors of your design toward the floor and lighter colors toward the ceiling. It creates a unique contrast that’s visually pleasing and balanced in most cases.
For example, if you have a monochromatic blue room design, you can start with a dark blue rug on the floor with medium or light blue walls and furniture. Then, the art on the walls can be painted in pale blue and white, while the light fixtures and ceiling should be primarily white. With a room design like that, your eyes will naturally move from the dark floor to the light ceiling, allowing your eyes to take in every aspect of the space.
9. Keep Ceilings White
You might notice that most ceilings are white. In many cases, there’s a reason for that. White is a versatile color that goes with nearly every color scheme. It’s also a very open color that helps reflect light. As a result, having a white ceiling can make the room feel larger and less crowded.
Ceilings don’t have to be white, but it’s a good default option to ensure they look nice with your design. Choosing a different ceiling color could make the room seem smaller, which could work in your favor depending on how you want the room to feel. For example, painting the ceiling a darker color than the walls can make it feel lower, which can be a good choice for a room with an extremely high ceiling. Yet, that’s a bold choice you need to make sure you’re confident about before moving forward.
10. Consider Adding Black in Every Room
Black is a striking color that can easily overpower other colors, but when it’s used in small amounts, it can add an interesting accent. It goes well with every color and can provide a unique contrast to light colors. Having bits of black here and there in your home can help guide your eyes from one focal point to another so you can easily take in every part of the room’s design.
In most cases, you should only use black for small items, such as a lamp or vase. If you want to include a large amount of black, such as cabinets or a TV stand, make sure it’s in a room design that could benefit from high contrast. Black is such a bold color that it’s usually the first thing people’s eyes are drawn to. So, only use it in large quantities if you want that item to be the focal point of your room.
11. Use Lights to Accent Certain Colors
The light fixtures you choose are part of your room design. While the lights themselves are usually just white (unless you’re using colorful lights for a gaming setup), you can use those lights to accent other colors. Set up a light fixture or a lamp to shine on the area that you want to be the focal point of the room. In most cases, that will likely be a couch or another large furniture piece.
However, lights can also be used to help certain accent colors stand out. For example, if you have a colorful painting that you love hanging on the wall, you could install a light to shine directly on it to help it stand out. If you don’t have a specific focal point but want the colors in your room to be mysterious and cozy, you could set up string lights as a form of ambient lighting.
12. Think About the Mood of the Room
When designing a room, consider how you want to feel while being in it. If it’s a room where you want to have a lot of energy, such as a living room where you’ll hang out with your friends, you may want to use warm, vibrant colors like yellow, pink, or red. If it’s a room you want to feel relaxed in, such as the bedroom or bathroom, you should lean more toward cool colors like blue.
Every color has certain meanings and can evoke specific emotions, so keep that in mind when choosing your color palette. If you’re having difficulty deciding what colors look best, ask yourself how you want the room to affect your mood, and choose colors associated with those feelings.
