Decorating a home is no easy feat. From choosing curtains online, to fighting over floorboards and carpet, designing the perfect interior to a dream home can be difficult.
Fortunately, creating a cohesive home color palette will make your decorating choices much easier, and is your chance to show off your unique design preferences. Here are some tips and tricks to nail color continuity throughout your home.
1. Know your Style
Before reaching for the paint can, its important to decide the kind of environment you hope to create in your home. Those who are gravitating towards an open and modern environment, may gravitate towards cooler tones with splashes of bold colour. Meanwhile, those who are hoping to create a cosy hideaway, will be reaching for the warmer and neutral tones.
When you have decided on the overall ambiance you are hoping to achieve, you can select a broad colour palette which will compliment your vision.
2. Develop Continuity
The easiest way to develop a cohesive palette throughout a home is to keep connecting spaces neutral. Hallways and landings play a key role in a cohesive color structure and design. Particularly in homes that have more of an open floor plan, it’s best to choose one color that is going to serve as a main colour throughout transitioning spaces. By choosing the same neutral undertone in these connecting spaces, you can create harmony between adjacent rooms of different colour.
The key to utilizing pops of colours throughout a home, without sacrificing continuity, is to keep recurring features the same neutral colours. For many homes this will mean keeping ceilings, skirting boards and other woodwork in the same neutral tones throughout the house.
3. Stick to Colour Groups
One way to increase the likelihood that a color scheme flows from room to room, is to limit yourself to colors in the same temperature family. This means choosing between a warmer palette of reds and oranges, or a cooler scheme of grays and blues.
Another option, is to select two primary colours and use variations of these throughout the house. For wall paint, you can ask the paint store to create a “tint” of a particular color, or create a mix using lighter and darker shades of paint. This is a simple yet effective way of creating consistency throughout the home, without having to put the same colour shade on every wall.
4. Know when to be Bold
If you have the urge to embrace a bold color somewhere, use it in a space that can stand on its own and is separate from other spaces such as a bedroom, library, or powder room. Rooms out of the sightline of other rooms are good places for going wild.
5. Consider Your Fixed Elements
All of the fixed elements within your home must be considered before developing a colour palette. This fixtures include cabinets, flooring, wall tiles, countertops and any trims. Although most of your fixed elements are probably a neutral color, even neutrals have color undertones. To properly choose colors to go with your fixed elements, you need to understand what undertone colors you are working with.
All of the fixed elements in your home automatically become part of your whole house color. Once you have determined whether these elements carry warm or cool undertones, you can then decide whether you wish to match the undertone or contrast against it. Ensuring that your fixed elements will suit your chosen palette is essential to developing a cohesive palette throughout your home.
6. Create a Swatch Book
A swatch book is a place to collect paint swatches and other samples for every room in your home. Creating a swatch book is the most important step in planning the colour palette of a room, and is a great to refer to before making any purchases for the space. Before grabbing the paintbrush or wallpaper, create a swatch book to ensure consistency throughout your home.
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When it comes to color, there really is no “correct” palette. There are however, many ways of ensuring a cohesive flow of colour throughout your home. To avoid constant trips to the paint store and agonising over shades of white, follow these tips to create your own whole house colour palette.