If you plan your room decorating schemes so that the colors relate to those in adjacent areas, your home will have a unified and harmonious feel.
Your home is like a huge blank canvas, and just as an artist considers his canvas as a whole rather than section by section, so you need to think about the way the colors in one area relate to, and are affected by, those in the rooms that lead off it. Each room should have a distinctive character that reflects its shape, size, function, and aspect. But if every room is treated as a separate entity, the house will lack a sense of coherence.
Ideally, the progress from one space to another should not be visually jarring, but there is always a place for colorful surprises. If you plan carefully you can use color to provide visual links, and to lead the eye from room to room so that the house acquires a sense of continuity, spaciousness, and completeness, regardless of its size.
Start by walking around your house, making a note of those areas that pose potential problems. The entrance hall is important because it is where visitors gain their first impression of your home. Throw all the doors open and survey the house as though you are a stranger. Notice the way the walls of the hall, and the architraves of the doors act as frames for the rooms beyond. Go into the rooms that lead off, and look back into the hallway. Doors pose an interesting problem because when they open into a room, the color on the outside becomes part of the room.
Providing logical progressions of color is most important in open plan homes, and in any part of the house where one space leads on from another - in rooms leading off a hallway, in bedrooms with an attached bathroom, and in kitchens with a dining area, for example.
Walls
The walls are the most obvious place to start your decorative scheme. Think about the main planes of color on walls, floors, ceilings, doors, and furniture, and the points at which they will butt up to each other. Apply test color to large sheets of card and stand them against walls and alongside each other to assess their impact.
The simplest color schemes are based on different shades of the same color. In the rooms off a hallway, for example, you could use shades of rose, pale terra cotta, and crimson, with white or sage green woodwork and architraves, providing a unifying link.
Harmonious colors - colors from the same sector of the color wheel - also provide a ready-made unity. So blues, greens, and blue-greens used in adjacent spaces will allow the eye to flow effortlessly from one space to the other.
Pleasing effects can also be achieved by teaming harmonious or neutral colors with a carefully chosen contrast color. Balance dramatic wall colors with neutral floors and natural materials. Another approach is to use a range of related neutrals on walls and floors, with accent colors to create impact and mood in the different rooms.
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©2007, Kathy Burns-Millyard.
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