Bring Color Into Your Home

Color has the ability to completely alter the atmosphere and ambiance of your home. Adding color to your home requires careful preparation and planning, but the results last for years to come. Plan on a vibe, match your colors carefully, and keep in mind there are more ways to introduce color into a space than just painting your walls.

Steps

Deciding on a Vibe

1. Increase a room's social appeal with warm colors. Reds, yellows, and oranges make up the warm side of the color spectrum. These colors encourage activity and life, and they can help create the right vibe in your living room and kitchen area.
2. Maximize relaxation with cool tones. Cool colors like blues, greens, grays, and purples make up the other end of the spectrum. A room painted in or accented with cool colors becomes a calm and private space perfect for relaxation and concentration. For this reason, consider filling your bedroom and bathroom with cool colors.
3. Embrace Add Bold Color to Your Home. Jewel tones, like bright pinks, golds, and blacks, might be the way to go for your home, especially for rooms like your living room. Take advantage of the pops of color and life that bold colors can bring to your home!
   • Pair sequins and glitter with jewel tones for an even brighter look.
4. Create a mellow vibe with Decorate Your Home with Pastel Colors. Pastels like salmon, peach, mint, and pale blue help create a soft, sweet, and often younger look. Create a soft bathroom or inviting foyer by adding pastel colors to your home. For a more retro look, you can also use pastels in your kitchen cabinets or appliances.
5. Balance your colors with white and neutral tones. Follow the unofficial 80% neutral/20% colorful rule to make sure no room becomes weighed down by its own colors. Use white to help balance out other colors and keep a room from being too overwhelming.
   • Other neutral colors include creams, grays, and even black.
   • White is a great option, but make sure you keep it clean!

Matching Colors

1. Use complementary colors for distinctly vivid rooms. Complementary colors, like blue and orange, yellow and purple, and red and green can work to your advantage. Add even more variety to your room by using complementary color families.
   • For example, instead of using blue and orange in a room, diversity with navy, baby blue and cerulean complementing blood tangerine, rust, and coral.
   • Use paint chips and color wheels to find your favorite shades.
2. Emphasize continuity in your home by sticking to a color scheme. Though might be tempting to include all colors in your home, maintaining a general color scheme helps preserve consistency throughout. For example, if you have a blue and orange foyer, consider making blue one of the prominent color families on display in the next room, and having orange reappear later in your house.
   • This also makes purchasing paint, furniture, and especially accessories easier, because they fit in multiple rooms.
3. Focus on patterns as well as colors. Just like colors need to be cohesive, patterns also need to have a cohesive structure within your home. Choose one or two stand-out patterns that appeal to you, and then stick to mainly solid colors to compliment those bolder styles.
   • Common patterns for home decorating include thick stripes, gingham, quatrefoil, and animal print.
   • Chevron and geometric patterns are recent hits.

Changing the Look

1. Paint your walls. Paint is the most traditional way of changing a home's color, but it can also be one of the most time consuming and expensive ways. To cut down on cost, consider painting one Pick a Color for an Accent Wall instead of redoing the whole room.
   • If you don't have the time, you can consider hiring painters, though depending on where you live that can be quite expensive.
   • Make sure you use painter's tape and cover any large furniture while you're painting.
2. Add wallpaper to give a room a unique look. Nowadays, peel and stick wallpapers offer nearly endless options while simultaneously being relatively inexpensive and easy to apply. Consider redoing a room or, for an easier and cheaper look, consider just doing a feature wall.
3. Use paper to add nontraditional color to your walls. If you don't want to or can't permanently alter the state of your walls with paint or wallpaper, add quirky colorful touches by hanging paint chips or cardstock in interesting patterns. These easy and nearly costless decorations catch the eye and are great conversation pieces!
   • Keep in mind that such DIY projects, while cheap, can be very time consuming.
   • Browse websites like Pinterest for great tips and ideas.
4. Introduce small colorful items like pillows and rugs. You don't necessarily need to redo your walls in order to bring color into your home. By introducing bright throw pillows, colored area rugs, or small colorful lamps or tables, you can easily add color to a room without breaking the bank.
   • These additions can also be done over time.

Expert Advice

Keep these tips in mind when you're decorating your home:

• Consider the flow from room to room. The wall color in one area should look good with the next color it meets. You don't have to settle on a single wall color for your entire home, but the color flow should feel thoughtful and deliberate.
• Choose 3-4 colors for your common spaces. The common areas of your home, such as your living room, den, and kitchen, should stick to a similar color scheme. Choose one shade to be dominant throughout the space, then use accent pieces to add 2-3 additional colors across all of the rooms."

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