How to Create a Mood With Color

Turn to fashion designers who have mastered this trick. "You see it in men's neck ties," says Joseph Berkowitz, an interior designer in Penn Valley, Pa. "A stripe of peach or hot pink will be surrounded by blacks, browns or grays to tone it down. In the same way, you can create a very elegant, traditional room using intense colors." Berkowitz has painted dining room ceilings teal or terra cotta to spice up neutral-colored walls and furnishings.

Vincent Smith-Durham, an interior designer in Philadelphia, painted one wall of every room in his home shocking pink in honor of his favorite fashion designer, Elsa Schiaparelli, who made the color famous in the '30s and '40s by pairing it with black. Smith-Durham also surrounded his pink walls with black or gray. "It's an incredible geranium pink with a lot of orange in it," he says, "It throbs with life, like the heartbeat of the house."

Design Tip:
You don't have to be as bold as pink — choose any bright shade in the color wheel to get your drama fix. Designer Andreas Charalambous chose a red accent wall to bring energy to this light-filled living room.