Colour My World

I love living in colour. Colour can transform a space, not just by transforming the appearance, but transforming the way a room feels.

Colour creates space, draws the eye and brings personality to a room. Colour isn’t just about your wall colour; furniture, flooring, drapes or blinds and décor together to create a colour scheme. Therefore changing the colour of a room isn’t limited to painting the walls, but it could be as simple as bringing in some colour with your duvet and artwork.

There are a couple of rules I follow when it comes to colour.

Rule One: Always have three tones within a room. I don’t just think about colour in terms of pink, blue, green but the degree of colour; light, medium and dark. I would never fill a room with all light colours in the same tones, as having degrees of colour allows depth within a room. For example in these images you see light walls, medium blinds or furniture and dark flooring which achieve a room with 3 tones.

Rule Two: Colour draws the eye. Colour grabs people’s attention and creates a focal point within a room. Therefore when I am placing colour in a room, especially on a wall I consider – is this where I want everyone to look? Light walls create space and dark walls close in a space, so a large room can have dark colours but small rooms cannot. As you can see in these images, colour is used to draw the eye and transform the sense of space.

Rule Three: Colours evoke your Emotions. There is a Color Psychology; meaning colour carries meaning and energy. White - purity, sense of space, neutrality. Black - authority, strength and intelligence. Red - romance, gentleness, warmth, energy and intensity. Orange - Enthusiasm, wealth, prosperity, sophistication and stimulation Yellow - happiness, laughter, optimism, hunger, frustration, anger and attention-getting. Green - natural, growth, health, envy, tranquillity, harmony, calmness. Blue - calmness, serenity, cold, loyalty and focused. Purple - royalty, wealth, sophistication, exotic, spiritual and mystery. Brown - reliability, stability, sadness and warmth. Pink - romance, gentle, calming, agitation. How you wish to live in the space should also be considered when you are selecting a colour palette. For example, our bedroom has neutral walls but a feature wall behind our bed that introduces light blues and greens with bedside tables in the same colour. Bringing in these two colours means introducing feelings of calmness, tranquility and growth. It is important to remember people respond to colour differently, one person can walk into a red room and feel a sense of passion and romance, while someone else can feel anger and be over stimulated.

Rule Four: The Rule of Threes. Within a room there should be 3 colours or colour variants. Too many colours creates confusion and distraction and too little creates a 1 dimensional room without depth. It normally works to have one dominant colour, the second is subsidiary, and final one is for accent or trim.