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By Mark McCauley, ASID,
Special to HGTV.com |
Afraid of using color in your own home?
Don't be.
It all comes down to 10 color basics. Here are the first five.
The human eye can see more than 16 million colors. That's a lot of color mistakes just waiting to happen. But if you follow the simple step-by-step "cookbook" rules here, you can be a color chef, whipping up scrumptiously colored spaces that are a feast for the eyes.
The first thing you need to remember is high school physics class. Remember the color wheel? Wheel on down to the paint store and pick one up. Professional colorists and interior designers use the wheel frequently and find it an invaluable aid for choosing, mixing and matching colors.
Then, have at it with the tips listed below. And good luck! When it comes to color, you’ll soon be in the pink. |
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Decorating a space in terms of color is as easy as 60-30-10. Don’t believe me? Take a look at some rooms in magazines or in Designers’ Portfolio. You’ll notice that the rooms you like the most are almost invariably divided into percentages of 60-30-10.
Why this works is anybody's guess. Perhaps it is the human tendency to see an overall theme in the 60 percent hue, unifying the coloration. The 30 percent provides visual interest and the 10 percent, not unlike jewelry, provides that little spark of sparkle. |
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So, when decorating a particular room, divide the colors into percentages:
60% of a dominant color
30% of a secondary color
10% of an accent color
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When you think about it, this color breakdown is similar to a man’s business suit:
60% of the outfit's color is the slacks and jacket
30% of the outfit's color is the shirt
10% of the outfit's color is the tie
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Translated to a room setting, it typically means:
60% of the room's color is the walls
30% of the room's color is the upholstery
10% of the room's color is, say, an accent piece or a floral arrangement
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| Trying to decide on the right color scheme for a room or an entire home can be difficult. You can simplify the process by using your color wheel and narrowing down your choices to two color schemes. There are more, of course, but these are the most effective and provide a great place to start. |
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Complementary Color Scheme
Complementary colors are across from each other on the color wheel, such as red and green, blue and yellow, or purple and orange. Rooms decorated with a complementary color scheme tend to provide a clear separation of colors and often are more formal and more visually challenging. Complementary color schemes should be used in the more formal areas of the home—for example, the living room or dining room.
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Analogous Color Scheme
Analogous colors are next to each other on the color wheel, such as yellow and green, blue and violet, or red and orange. Rooms using an analogous color scheme typically are more causal, restful and muted in terms of coloration. This color scheme is best used in the more informal areas of the home. Family rooms, dens and bedrooms—places where you’re searching for rest and recovery from the day—look and “feel” great in analogous colors. |
This is an old adage in interior design. By adding a black element—say, a black box, lampshade, picture frame or other accent—you clarify and enhance all the other colors in the space. Try it—it really works!
To help you choose a color scheme, look at the colors in the largest pattern in the room first, be it drapery, upholstery fabric, an Oriental rug or a large artwork. Then choose colors based upon that piece. This is much easier (and less expensive) than painting the walls a particular color and finding that absolutely nothing else on the planet, let alone in your room, will match it. In other words, if your favorite piece of art is red, black and gray, you can choose the gray to be 60 percent, the red to be 30 percent and the black to be the 10 percent—or the red could be the dominant color with the gray and black taking secondary and accent roles.
Keep in mind that colors on the market are driven by economics. The color industry comes out with standard colors for particular years (anyone remember their harvest gold kitchens from the ‘60s?). These standardized colors are then used for cars, appliances, fabrics—you name it!
These colors will change depending on the "color beneath the color." In the ‘80s colors had blue beneath the basic color, therefore the fashionable colors at the time included mauve (a red with blue undertones) and sea foam (a green with blue undertones). Today the trendy undertone color is yellow, so you get "sage" greens, "hot" reds and “lilac” blues. Keep that in mind when you’re deciding on your color scheme. 
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Most people err, not with color, but with value. Value is the relative lightness or darkness of a color. Often you’ll see a space that is not balanced in terms of value: one side of the room is too dark (therefore, "weighty" or "heavy") versus the other side, which is light in value and tends to "float away" visually.
Try designing your interior space by replicating the color values of the outside world. After all, interior designs are basically our attempt to imitate Mother Nature, who is a great colorist!
Choose darker values of color for the floor (ground), medium values of color for the walls (trees and mountains) and light values of color for the ceiling (sky). If you divide your colors by value from dark to light as you decorate "vertically" in the room, you’ll get an interior design that looks good every time.
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| Mark McCauley is a professional member of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) and is author of Color Therapy at Home (Rockport Publishers, 2000) and Interior Design for Idiots (Great Quotations Publishing Company, 1995). He is senior designer at Darleen's Interiors in Naperville,Ill. |
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