Defining Your Color Scheme

by

Leslie Shankman-Cohn, ASID

Everyone who has ever painted a room has asked themselves at least one of these questions at one time or another: “Where do I start? How do I decide what colors to use? I know what I like, but I don’t know how to pull it together. The color I picked out in the store looked different when I put it up on my walls!”

Most of us have a favorite color or color hues that make us feel happy or comfortable. But deciding which colors fit our own space-which colors will make the room feel just right-can be intimidating and even a bit overwhelming. Just as there is never a single perfect color for a room, there is never only one correct place to start. Making the perfect color choices for your personality and lifestyle is a process, not a step-by-step program.

Before you start arbitrarily painting colors everywhere, you’ll need to think about the nature of your space. Ask yourself questions, take notes, and gather important information about the character of the rooms, the architectural features, and the quality of light. Some of the questions to consider are:

Which colors naturally appeal to you?

Which colors make you feel relaxed and which seem to give you energy?

How much natural light does the room get?

Do you want to make the space feel warm and comfortable or open and airy?

Consider, too, the function of the particular room. There are basically two “types” of rooms…Daytime rooms and Nighttime rooms. Daytime rooms are those that are high-use, and are used primarily during daylight hours, for example, the den/family room, the kitchen, and the playroom. Nighttime rooms are those that are less frequently used, or are used primarily at night, such as the dining room, formal living room, and bedrooms. Daytime rooms should be more soft, light, bright, and stimulating. These rooms do best with shades of neutrals, yellows, or soft pastels. Nighttime rooms can handle deeper richer colors that are more saturated, intense, inviting, and romantic, such as deep reds, putty tans and sage greens.

OK, you’ve done your homework; you know how you use the rooms, and what general colors make you feel good. But there are still a million choices of colors out there, now where do you go?

Find one object that you love! It could be a porcelain bowl, a piece of artwork, an Oriental rug, or even a picture in a magazine, anything that inspires you. Starting with a fabric you love is one good way to narrow your choices. Use those colors to create the palette for walls, floor, furnishings, and accessories. (It’s always easier to choose the fabric first and match your exact colors to it!) For furnishings and window treatments, look for fabrics that combine your “inspiration-piece” colors in varying amounts of shades and textures.

Are you inspired by a particular era in history? You might take a cue from the period architecture or furniture in your home. Different periods have different colors that are associated with them, such as burgundy red in the Victorian era and hot pink and psychedelic orange in the 60’s. That does not mean that you have to restore it authentically, but you might find inspiration in the historical colors to help you devise a scheme that suits you, your home, and today’s palettes.

Sometimes you have a pre-established color that you have to work around, such as wall-to-wall carpet, tile, countertop, or any number of elements in a rental space that you just cannot change. If this is the case, these elements will affect the overall color scheme, even if you decide on a monochromatic white palate. “But,” you ask, “is white really a color?” In pigment or dye form, it is technically without color. But in terms of light, white contains all the colors of the spectrum: red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo, and violet. Consequently, there are hundreds of whites and whatever one you choose, it should be in the same tonal family as the elements that you have to work with.

Now, how do you decide what colors to put where? Start with the rooms where you and your family spend the most time. However, it is important not to consider only a single room at a time, but a series of rooms. Rooms are seen from one to the other, and the interplay of colors between rooms is as important as the colors for individual rooms; elements within rooms, and what surrounds them all affect color atmosphere.

What mood do you want to create? Which of the colors in your “inspiration piece” will help you achieve that mood? When choosing a paint color, keep in mind that light colors will reflect light and visually expand the room, while dark colors will absorb the light, making the space feel smaller. Use a tone of that inspiration color for the walls and perhaps a tint of the secondary color for the ceiling and floor. Remember, although most people overlook it when thinking color, the ceiling represents one-sixth of the space in a room. The color atmosphere of a room results not only from whatever hue is on the walls, but from how the walls interact with the ceiling and the floor, with the light coming in through the windows, and with glimpses of other rooms seen through the doorways.

Just when you think you have everything planned, you bring your wonderful paint sample home and find that it “dies” in your space! Now what? One of the most difficult aspects of choosing the right paint color is knowing how it will behave in different lights. A specific color that may have looked great on a chip in the paint store may look totally different on the walls of your home. Check it out in different light and at different times of the day. The best way to test your overall color scheme is to hang drapery samples on the wall next to the windows, lay a large piece of carpet on the floor, put a large sample of the actual paint color on the wall so that the samples receive the lighting from the direction that they wood if they were in place. Walk by the colors in different times of the day; decide whether you like the colors in natural and artificial light. Also, look at them from the vantage point of other rooms to be sure that you have created a nice “flow” of color from room to room. Worried that this sounds like too much trouble? The results are well worth your time and effort—it is much less expensive and time consuming to move a few paint samples and fabrics throughout the house then to re-do a mistake.

By now you’ve realized that many elements go into the making of a beautiful room. Color is one of the most effective decorating tools you can use to make your home comfortable and beautiful. There are no set rules, so unleash your creative spirit – don’t worry, it’s just paint!