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Determining Your Color Scheme

Color SchemeOnce you understand the basics of colors, it’s easier to start choosing what you’ll feature in your home. But getting started may be difficult if you have no clear-cut ideas of what colors to utilize. Before you even begin to look, however, there are several factors to consider including room size, light, and lifestyle. Once those factors have been established, it’s time to hit the street and do some homework.

Collecting pictures from catalogs and magazines and organizing a collage often helps get your creative juices flowing. Also, you should visit area decorating stores for the latest ideas. Borrow paint strips and fabric swatches from the stores, which lend them out days at a time. Spread these collections around a room and mix up the colors to get a feel of every possible variation.

Room Size
If you want to make a small room appear larger, color can make it happen. Light colors tend to make a small space more grandeur. That’s why ceilings are traditionally white. So, pastels would work well if you have a small room. Pastels would also brighten up a room without a lot of natural light from a window.

On the other hand, if you have a great room, darker shades will work well. Sometimes a large room appears stark and unfriendly. The use of warm, darker colors makes it cozier. Contrasting colors can also deceive the eye. In older homes where ceilings are usually taller, rooms appear even larger. Wainscoting in contrasting colors in this case can help “shrink” a large room. The walls become the center of attention and divert attention to the largeness of an area.

Light
Be sure to look at various examples of paint strips and fabric swatches in both artificial and natural light. Depending on your light source, the sun or a lightbulb, your colors could be drastically different than you planned.

Again, it’s important to determine the light source when you are determining a “look” for a room. For instance, don’t choose a room with big trees blocking natural sunlight to be a romantic, fresh and airy bedroom. Nature will work with you or against you in certain instances. A sunny location will not entirely brighten up a home if it has small windows and low ceilings. Good lighting systems, of course, provide plenty of artificial light, but it’s more costly, too.

Lifestyle.
Depending on how you live, you may prefer a casual, light room to a darker, more formal living area. Your choice of colors could be determined by children, for example. You don’t necessarily want white walls with a 2-year-old in the house. Sometimes, lifestyle has nothing to do with your color choices. Some decide on a color scheme because, simply, they like a pattern or paint color. Others still decorate a room around a piece of furniture, for example.

Written by the editors of HouseNet Inc

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