How to pick colours for your home.
Need to give your home a facelift, well we all know a lick of paint can do wonders for a space. But how do you decide what colour/ neutral or white would be best for the room?
Here are my key takeaways for selecting colours for your space.
Decide on a look and feel.
What about the space is feeling tired, or is making you feel uninspired? Have you recently invested in a new sofa and the wall colours just don’t suit? Understanding the motivation behind your need for change will help guide the decisions moving forward, for instance, you might be feeling like the space is too drab and you want it to feel fresh and bright, so this would suggest you need a crisp neutral or white to give the space a modern contemporary aesthetic. Or perhaps you might be feeling that it lacks character and personality which would suggest you may want to add colour or wallpaper to add a pop to the space.
Don’t just paint a space a trending colour, it may not fit the brief for the overall look and feel.
Create a colour palette.
Unpack what colours are in your home in order to help create a colour palette. There is no limit to the colours you have in your home but try and base your colours around the 60, 30, 10 rule. 60% is the dominant colour, 30% being a secondary colour and 10% is an accent colour (or two, or three). Your home may already have an accent colour and a secondary colour so then you are left to find a dominant colour that compliments the existing colours and creates the feeling you are after.
Understand your lighting.
This is a very very important part of the process! Sometimes it’s the lighting that actually needs to be tweaked not the paint colour. Work out what your house orientation is and what the light is like in the rooms you want to paint, but also look at the artificial lighting in the space, what colour are the bulbs and how bright are they? From this, you can work out whether you actually just need to increase the level of lighting or change the tone of the bulb to get your desired effect and you can ensure you are working with the natural light the space possesses….. More on this in another post in the next few days.
Get Swatches.
Once you have narrowed your colour choices (whether that be via selecting colours in-store, online or with a colour consultant) order swatches from the paint company. It’s vital you see the colours first hand before making a choice. Always see and observe how they change in the light over a few days. I believe it is also important to check in with how the colour you have selected makes you feel each time you see it. Colour is subjective and emotional - if you have a questionable reaction to the colour then it’s not the right one however if it feels you with joy each time you see it then you have made the right choice.
Once you have worked through these steps, you should be left with a colour that will make you feel happy and at home. If you still feel overwhelmed after following these steps then perhaps getting in contact would be beneficial for you! I can walk you through your colour selections and interior schemes.
