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7 Designer Tips for Choosing a Perfect Color Palette for Your Home

February 25, 2021 by Jeremy Lindy

Whether you are building your home from scratch or only remodeling it, you might wonder which color will be the best fit for the walls. With the wide variety of colors you can use, this decision is not an easy one.

Colors are powerful tools in our hands. As many articles suggest, color hue, brightness, and saturation can affect our emotions. Picking the right color palette for your home may be more important than you think. It’s not only about the walls, but also furniture, or even easy fit vinyl planks.

This article lists a few useful designer tips for choosing the best colors for your home. If you wish to find a color palette that best suits your personality and lifestyle, read on.

Keep the Tones Consistent

Home colors are usually created using more than one color. So, the first thing to take into consideration when picking the color palette is to keep in mind the tones you will be using.

It’s not always easy deciding on a color palette unless you know what colors will work with one another. Therefore, narrowing down your choices is important when choosing a color palette for your home.

You can start by choosing colors that are similar in tone and value or choose varying shades of one color if that works better for your home.

When you’re trying to decide on a color palette, it’s also important to remember that there aren’t set rules for putting colors together. You only need to choose from a spectrum of hues that work well with the others and also provide the atmosphere you want your guests to experience.

Balance Light and Dark Colors

Like laundry, all too often, colors get mixed up and cause an unintentional mess. So, it is always important to learn how to balance light and dark colors when choosing which ones to use in your home.

Using too many light colors in small spaces may end up making the space feel brighter and smaller while using dark colors in large spaces can make it feel more confined and smaller as well. Using both light and dark colors in different places in your home will give it a balanced look even if each room has a different theme or design style.

You can also create a balanced look by using neutrals and strong bright hues together.

Consider Your Lifestyle

To pick the perfect color palette for your home, you also need to consider how you want your home to make you feel as well as how you want others to feel when they visit.

For example, you may envision your home office having mostly neutral colors like white, black, gray, and brown. Then, in your living room, you may wish to have a fun color scheme like coral and hot pink for a lively look.

If you know that you will have many visitors in your home, picking bolder colors may be the best choice for you.

If you have a small apartment building that has small windows and is located near a noisy street with lots of traffic, bright colors could help the place feel less gloomy and depressing.

Consider Natural Elements in Your Home

Grounding yourself is one of the most important things to do when designing your home. So, whether you’re decorating from scratch or only remodeling it, it’s always important to take into consideration certain parts of nature already in your home such as the windows, walls, floors, etc.

Your choice of colors should not disrupt what’s already there but instead complement them. For example, if you are painting the walls or refinishing them in another color scheme than they were originally in, you can add more character to it by painting the window frames to complement what’s already there. Follow your instincts and let nature guide you. 

Improve Your Room With the Right Lighting

It’s not all about picking colors, but how you light them up. It’s always important to consider the lighting of your home because different colors look better depending on how you illuminate them.

If you place a light on a surface, it’s best to use cool colors like white, blue, green and black to create an illuminating effect. On the other hand, using warm colors like red, orange and yellow will give your space a cozy ambiance even if it might not be bright at all times of the day.

If you want your walls to look less flat or dull while using dimmer switches then use dimmable LED lights or other lights with a low-voltage CFL or low-voltage halogen bulbs in order to achieve a multitude of color options. 

Mix Old and New Furniture Pieces

The style of your furniture can make a big difference in the look and feel of your home decoration. So, if you wish to create a home design with vintage elements, choosing furniture pieces that have been previously used might be the right choice for you.

In case you don’t really like the style of old furniture pieces, it might be best not to add them to your home design at least until you see what else works well in each room or even outside, e.g., flowers or gardening elements…etc. So, keep these creative options in mind when decorating your home and choose what works best for you!

Consider the Scale of Your Furniture

Representational paintings of objects are not the only things that look bigger or smaller depending on the size of your home. In fact, furniture and ornaments do too.

For example, adding big light fixtures to a small room can make that room look even more cluttered, especially when the rest of the furniture is considerably smaller in size. So, it’s always important to choose items that fit the scale of your home and also make up a balanced design scheme.

Even the flooring may affect how certain furniture pieces look in your home. For example, if you have a hardwood floor that is light in color, then adding dark wood furniture pieces will definitely contrast with the natural light that pours into your home. You may want to pick options that have lighter finishes instead such as white or natural wood tones so they blend together well creating a harmonious look and feel.

Conclusion

Functionalism is fundamental when designing your home as well as choosing what color palette will work well for it. For example, kitchens tend to have more white walls while dining rooms are usually painted more neutral colors such as browns. These are elements that you can easily find around your home if you decide to remodel it or get new furniture for each room in your house. 

Remember that you are the only one who needs to be happy with the color palette of your home for the design to work - so there’s no need to follow the trends too closely. 


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February 25, 2021 /Jeremy Lindy
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