Bold and beautiful - colour your home

Why settle for bland and boring when you can live in full colour. Be inspired by these colourful home interiors.

02/05/2018

Finding your inspiration

There's a colour for every mood and every room; from cool blues for a soothing bedroom to sunny yellow for lackluster rooms. There's no reason why you have to live boring when you can go bold with paint. Everyone has their favourite colours, whether you see them in a magazine or find them online, but be aware that what you see isn't always what you get.

Viewing colours online and in magazines will vary drastically from the actual colours used, and it's always better to pop into your nearest paint store to view the actual colour swatches. Once you have the colour swatches you can take them home and view them in the room under actual light conditions. In this way you're sure to decorate with the colours you want.

If you're still not sure, use a tester pot or small tin of paint and apply to the wall. Let the paint dry and then view this at different times of the day under natural and artificial light.

Colours affect mood and atmosphere

Before painting walls take the time to decide on how you want the room to feel. Warm colours will heat up a room and inject energy. Cooler colours in the blue spectrum are cooling, calming and relaxing. Taking this into consideration you can use colour to affect mood and atmosphere.

However, too much of a single colour in one room can also overload the senses and make you feel uncomfortable. An interior designer looks at every room - it's purpose, how much natural light it receives, whether the room is warm or cold, the size of the room - and select colours that balance out the negatives.

If you want to introduce cool colours into a room, but don't want the room to feel too cold, layer the room with pieces that incorporate organic textures, warm metallic finishes, or colours from the warm side of the spectrum.

Looking for colour cues

When choosing colours for decorating a room, in most instances you will already have furnishings and decor accessories in the room, and these can be helpful in pointing you in the right direction for choosing colours for walls. A beautiful piece of art or a colourful rug, even accessories in the room, take your colour cues from a particular item and then choose colour swatches with different hues of the same colour.

Using a colour swatch with a selection of hues (light to dark) of a colour helps you to select a lighter colour for walls and a darker colour for trim, or vice-versa.

Pale blue walls in this kitchen take their colour cue from the kitchen cabinets, while green accessories introduce a second colour.

Introduce an accent colour

A small splash of accent colour is an easy way to uplift a monochromatic or neutral colour scheme. Using the 60-30-10 method, the walls will be 60%, furniture will be 30%, and an accent colour will make up the remaining 10%. While there are no longer any defining rules for colours, it's a good idea to consider the colour wheel as a reference for adjacent, complementary and contrasting colours, as not all colours work well together. 

ABOVE and BELOW: Warm and cool colours can instantly change the atmosphere in a room. 

In a dull room, or a room that doesn't receive a lot of natural light, yellow adds warmth and energy.

Neutral colours are easily lifted with the addition of colourful accessories.

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