Picking Colors for Your Home

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

With so many different paint colors, styles, and finishes, choosing the right colors for your home can feel like a puzzle. The most important aspect of an interior color scheme is that it feels right to you. After all, you’ll be the one in your space every day! We’re bringing you advice and tips on picking colors for your home that will help set the tone for your space.

Finding Inspiration

If you’re unsure where to start with a blank canvas of a room, start by pulling out shades that are like objects you enjoy in the room, like furniture or art prints. Many designers adhere to a 60-30-10 concept. 60% of the space will be your eye’s main focus, such as the walls. 30% of the space should be a complimentary color from floor covering, window treatments, or furniture. 10% of the space should be something to enhance the space, like a highlight or shadowed shade from accent pieces, accessories, and artwork.

Using websites like Pinterest or Adobe Color can help you understand how colors work together through different schemes and displays.

Use Color Theory

Color theory is the science behind what colors go well together. Color schemes are combinations of colors together that achieve a kind of harmony. When creating a color scheme, it may be tempting to add a lot of different colors for contrast and depth, but Adobe cites that simple color schemes are better. experimenting with hues and blends, color harmony is easy to achieve.

Color Can Affect Your Mood

Colors play an important role in human psychology. Our brains associate certain colors with feelings. Warm colors (like red, orange, and yellow) are associated with energy, passion, and happiness. Cool colors (like blue, purple, and teal greens) are associated with inspiration, peace, and inspiration. Food brands, like McDonald’s, tend to use saturated warm colors to stimulate appetite and excitement. The Barnes & Noble bookstore, in contrast, uses teal greens and a warm brown to evoke introspection and trust.

You can create mindful rooms by using specific colors. A living room painted with a pale pink can evoke jovial social gatherings, meanwhile a dark green in a bathroom can help create a calming sanctuary.

The Color Wheel

The color wheel is a useful tool to learn how colors may relate to one another. A color wheel contains twelve color hues and contains primary (red, blue, yellow), secondary, and tertiary colors.

Light Can Change Tone

How light hits a space and the positioning of the sun can have an influence on what color our eyes pick up. Windows directed towards daylight will also be more effected by shifting color. A red wall may look more vibrant during afternoon golden hour versus the pale light of sunrise.

Florescent lights have cool undertones while incandescent lamps offer warm undertones. A blue space with incandescent bulbs can make the color feel muted with yellows, whereas florescent lighting can add depth to the same space.

It’s best to swatch your colors to see how lighting changes the tone and shade.

Your Home’s Masterpiece

Your space’s colors should reflect what makes you happy, so use ones that you love! If your home is no longer bringing color into your life, contact us today. Our experienced Licensed Loan Originators will work hard to make your homeownership dreams a reality.