How to choose the perfect interior design colours

Wheter you are redoecorating or moving in a new house, most times, choosing the perfect colours can be a daunting task, even harder if you are a perfectionist. It seems like there are too many choices and you have no idea how to choose just the right ones. You can compare it to being inside a candy store with those sweet temptations all around you – so much choice, it all looks so amazingly good and you’ve only got a limited  How do you choose the perfect candy? Our solution is to choose one of as many as you can afford and then next time you will know your favorite.

Here are some simple tips on how to choose the perfect colours for your house:

First, choose how you want the room to feel – warm or cool. This will narrow down the colour palette by half, so it’s a useful first step in your colour journey. Use the color wheel to choose a warm or a cool colour. Our advice is to alternate warm and cool feelings between rooms, so that you have a room for every mood.

Don’t use too many colors or it may become difficult for your eyes to focus. Stick to a maximum of three to balance throughout the room, any more than that and your room will look like a carnival and you will not be comfortable being there.

Use the color wheel to help make color selections that you know are a formula for success. Analogous schemes, which means colors that are next to each other on the color wheel, are great for creating a scheme that is easy on the eye. Don’t put too much change in color. For example, blue and green tones work great for this scheme and are usually very calming and restful, which makes them ideal for bedrooms.

Use the largest pattern in the room and choose one colour from that. This could be a painting, a rug, curtains or upholstery fabric on a chair or sofa, to name just a few examples. If you don’t want to go with a solid or bold color, we suggest you select from the patterns background or neutral palette.

Use a dark color to ground your scheme and gradually lighten up as you go vertically in the room with a mid tone color for your walls and a light color/white for the ceiling.

Our advice is: go out, look around you and see what other people have done, then decide what works for you and what doesn’t. You don’t have to copy it, but it will definitely get you thinking about what you like and what you don’t.

If you’re still in doubt, you can use neutrals and texture. Some people just can’t live with color in their home, it seems too much for them or maybe it’s just a matter of taste. If you belong to this category, maybe stick to neutrals, black, white and gray, you can never go wrong with these combinations. Remember this: always use texture, otherwise your scheme may look flat and washed out under lighting.

Be true and honest with yourself and really understand what you like and don’t like. This way, you will rule out color options to start with making it easier for you to select one or three. Statistically, there are more colours that you don’t like than colours you like, so elliminating the unpleasant ones will make your task a lot easier and less time consuming.

This may seem too easy, but it’s good advice, trust us: take a look at the colours you wear. These are clearly colours that you like and flatter you, otherwise you wouldn’t wear them every day to showcase your personality and sense of style. If you’re into wearing all black and use jewelry to compliment your outfits, then look at using a black leather sofa, maybe with a chrome and glass coffee table. You like colourful floral patterns, then pick one strong color to highlight things like your cushions and chairs. Then you can add a couple of coordinating neutrals for your walls and main pieces of furniture and drapes.

Another good tip is to use grey with a splash of colour, soft pastels for a calm effect or pink or vibrant orange to add movement and interest to your rooms.

A monochromatic color scheme is the easiest to master and looks good in any circumstances. Here you will use only one hue, so your only challenge is to decide on which one you like best.

If you want to hide something that you can’t move on a wall, you can simply paint it the same as the wall color. If you want it to stand out, use a contrasting color to make it a feature of the room. Using a light color will make the room look bigger, spacier and more open, using a dark color will make it feel more enclosed and smaller. Using tried and true traditional combinations is an easy way to select colors. Black and white or blue and white for example.

You can also take a shortcut: choose a wallpaper you like and use the color scheme from that – the same can be said for the fabric. You don’t have to have the wallpaper or the fabric in your home, you like the color scheme then use it.

You might find yourself asking how many colours is too many? The answer is: there are no strict rules in this aspect, but we generally don’t recommend using more than five colours, because it will tend to make your space look too busy and not pleasing to the eye. We are not including here small colour highlights in a sofa fabric or the ten different shades of green on a landscape painting on the wall. We mean five different areas of different colours.

Start looking around you and counting how many colors are used in one space. What looks better more or less? Does it make a difference if there is a definite style or period that the room is decorated in? Most importantly, analyze how the combinations of colours make you feel inside, literally and figuratively. We know it might sound a bit strange, but colour does evoke different feelings within us. Remember how this works is it good or bad and start trying it out on your designs.

If you plan on using white, choose a shade that is lighter than you really want, as inside it will look stronger and more intense. White is a difficult colour to perfect, but if you always think about where you are putting it, what will go next to it, what sort of light you get in the room and what tint goes into the formula to make the colour white you have chosen.

There you go. Next time you go shopping for colours, you will know what to look for and how to choose the perfect combinations to make your house just as you want it.