Useful Interior Color Guide

Beautiful interior color can make your whole house seem thoughtful, well-planned and organized. Here’s a guide to help you find the right palette.

I admit there are no hard-and-fast rules. The color choices are personal so start with color which you love and which you won’t mind seeing daily.

Besides painting the wall, you can also introduce color into your home via home interior fabric, wallpaper and rugs.

One rule I recommend is to stick with neutral tones for parts of your interior which are large and permanent e.g. sofa and cabinets. The bright hues are usually reserved for accent pieces like towels, pillow cases or even pottery.

Wall Color Selection Tips

As it's nearly impossible to pick the right color from a paint chip or in the can, here's a cost-effective way to select the interior color you like.

First, buy several quarts of the colors that appeal to you. Then go to the local craft store and buy a dozen twenty by thirty inch poster boards and give them two coats of paint each. Do two or three sheets for each color.

Next, put the sheets in different locations in the same room. This will give you the opportunity to see how the color reacts to light: close to a window or deep in shadow, under a lamp, or by candlelight.

Most people overlook this aspect as many don't realize we need to look for colors with secondary characteristics - an afterglow or quality that inexplicably becomes more appealing on the wall than it was in the can.

It's almost impossible to recognize these traits from a swatch, but you can notice them immediately once you've seen the paint on your wall.

I'd also recommend buying more than one shade of a color you think you'll like. It's amazing how different they look on the walls.

Some Questions to Ask

Here’re some addtional questions you may want to ask when deciding on the right interior color:

• What color are the clothes in your closet? Do you tend to pick our colorful pieces or stick with the neutral ones?

• How big is the space? Do you want it to feel cozier or feel larger?

• Do you like to unify your rooms in the same color?

• How do you want to feel in the room? Relaxed and calm or dynamic and energetic?

• How much available light is there?

• Is there a view in the room? Do you want to incorporate this into your interior?

With the above, I hope you can enlist the familiarity of these everyday objects into a relaxed and meaningful color scheme.

Once you've selected the color, the most important part of the painting process is not the painting itself, but the preparation. Take a look here for additional information.

Interior Color Tips - Key Takeaway

For those looking to add color in your living space, consider the following tips:

• Add a feature to an all-white space by painting a wall in bold color such as red, blue or orange.

• Choose color that suits your space. For example, white will always enlarge a space.

• Look at accent colors - these can be introduced via flowers, lampshades, rugs or soft furnishing.

• Floors anchor a space to think if you'd like them to recede or intervene in a room by keeping them light, painting them in dark colors or covering them in lush color.

• Wallpaper is a great way to add spice up your interior color scheme which does not have to be permanent.

• Introduce seasonal color by having a spare set of loose covers for your sofas and chairs. Try white and neutral for summer, and rich burgundy and chocolates for winter.

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