New Homes Today Magazine
Color Chemistry: Find Hues to Suit Your Home
Make your home the paradise you desire
By Jan Jessup
Color coordinating is a bit like selecting a wardrobe to suit your style. The difference in a home is that the colors of your walls should match with the various elements that make up a room. These include wall art, lighting, floor plan, furniture and furnishing. The right amount of color in the right places will make your home the paradise you desire.
Adjust the Temperature
Almost any color can be warm or cool?even blues can be warmer if they have a red tinge, moving toward lilac. Greens are warmer with a touch of yellow, and reds are cooled with a tad of blue. You can make a warm chocolate-like brown with a red cast?or make it cool like dark wenge woods with a blue cast.
You may enhance the look of your décor or furnishing with warm or cool colored walls. For example, say you've bought an expensive painting for your home, only to realize the wall color clashes with your art. Your painting features lots of blues and greens, but your wall color is Linen White with a yellow cast?too warm for your art. You need a cool-cast color on the wall, not a warm-cast color. Adding a tint of white with a cool pink shade will enhance the artwork and bring the room together.
Wardrobe Match
Very often, the colors you gravitate to in your wardrobe will also be colors that you choose for your home?with some exceptions. Butter yellow may not be a color you wear, but it may add a chirpy and fresh feel to your kitchen walls.
In general, colors that match your personality and fashion style will most likely be the ones you prefer on your walls and in your décor. For example, people with a blue undertone to their skin may look good in blue-cast colors, while yellow and beige tend to wash them out. Examining the contents of your wardrobe may help you begin the process of selecting a color scheme for your home.
Lighting
Remember, changing your lighting may change the perception of the color of the furnishings in your room.
If you're changing your home lighting to compact fluorescent bulbs, watch for a cooler perception of colors. Historically, fluorescent lights had a blue-green cast, but are now available in warmer colored bulbs. Think about the color cast of your lighting; it will make all the difference in how you read the colors and fabrics in the room.
Neutrals vs. Beige
If you want to use a neutral color in your home?whether on a sofa, walls or carpet?but don't want beige or taupe, consider shades of green. Green is the most prevalent color in nature and can be quite neutral. Today there are many sophisticated shades of green in the marketplace?from subtle lemongrass and wasabi hues tinted with yellow, to celadon shaded with blue, to limed or herbal greens, to deeper olive, palm and spruce greens.
To add a lively accent to the green family, look to its complement in the red family?spice market reds tinged with saffron, raspberry reds shaded with blue, deep coral reds or softer terracotta corals. There are also many paint and fabric neutrals tinged with colors such as opaline blues, or with the palest hues of coral, green, gold or gray.
Open Floor Plans
Should you carry the same color scheme throughout your home?especially when rooms flow together in an open floor plan? The answer is both yes and no.
You don't need a same-color scheme when rooms are not so visible from one to the other. Bedrooms, dens, offices and laundry rooms may fall in this category in relation to each other. You can go a little wild with wallcovering or paint color in powder rooms, especially, since so little time is spent in a small bathroom.
On the other hand, rooms that share sight lines should "talk" to each other, but you don't have to use exactly the same colors or fabrics throughout. A bedroom with blue-topaz walls, an ivory carpet and white bedding would work with an adjoining bath featuring white tile walls with blue accents in towels, art and accessories.
You may also carry forward a pale color on the walls of your living room to a deeper version of that color in your dining room. For example, a living room of pale taupe walls, accented with reds and blues in the upholstered furniture may work with an adjacent hall or dining room featuring deep taupe walls, white woodwork, and a blue and white toile fabric for draperies. With indigo blue dining chairs, the whole living and dining space can look dramatic and sophisticated.
Go ahead and make your place your own. With a little knowledge of color harmony, you'll never want to leave the beauty and comfort of your improved home.
Colors used indoors tend to look deeper on the walls than they do on a paint chip?so while picking a color you love, consider testing a slightly lighter hue. To know for sure, paint two large white foamcore sheets (available at craft or art supply stores) with a test color. Place the sheets on a wall in your room, and then move them around onto another wall. Do this at different times of the day to see how lighting affects the shade of color. Many manufacturers offer small sizes of paint colors for testing.
Jan Jessup is director of communications at Calico Corners, a homestore that provides expert decorating advice and in-home design consultation nationwide.
