Choosing colours for your home is so difficult.
We’ve shared our colour choices and struggles in making decisions a few times before but now that we’re faced with redecorating a whole apartment (that’s quite a bit larger than our house before) I find myself struggling with all of the same problems.
We’re definitely guilty of seeing amazing interiors in magazines and on Pinterest (if you’re not yet following us on Pinterest, you can do so here! You totally should!) and wanting to recreate something similar in our own home but that’s not always how it works. There are so many things that impact the way colours look and as gorgeous as some colours look on other people’s Pinterest and Instagram feeds they may just not work in your own home.
Here are our tips for choosing colours that you won’t regret:
1. Plan Your Whole Scheme
How do your rooms flow and how will the colours flow? Does going from one room to the next clash? Is there a common (colour) theme?
You probably don’t want your home to feel like a colour chart but that doesn’t mean you can’t have more than one colour in your home either.
As a general rule, the smaller your house is the fewer colours you should use. Being restraint with your colour palette will usually make a space feel more coherent and larger.
2. What Do You Want The Room To Feel Like?
What do you want your space to feel like? Do you want it to be calm and relaxing? Warm and inviting? Moody and comforting?
Colour makes a huge difference in the way a room feels.
For our guest bedroom, we wanted to create a room with a calm, clean and fresh feel. The pink and yellow walls just had to go! In the end, we opted for a cool grey colour for the walls but still added some pops of colour with our furniture and accessories. Just because you use a neutral colour on your walls doesn’t mean you can’t still have some fun with colour!
3. Go Bold!
You don’t have to paint your whole home black to create impact. Think about adding a splash of colour, something dark or maybe even pattern to your home.
One of the biggest changes we noticed is that a space instantly feels much more finished if you use a dark colour. We can’t all afford to plan a complete new room with all new furniture but changing the colour of a room, especially to a dark colour, will somehow make the room feel more furnished and more finished.
As a general rule, it’s worth considering choosing colours that are a slightly darker shade of colour than you anticipated – especially if you have very light rooms. There’s a reason that warmer countries with lots of sunshine often use brighter colours as anything more neutral will easily look washed out.
4. Consider What You Already Have In Your Home
What furniture do you have? Do you have a favourite piece of art?
Take your favourite possessions into consideration. Will they work well with the colours you’re planning on using?
Using colour also doesn’t have to be restricted to your walls! We painted all of our chairs in our dining room a different colour!
Often, not knowing where to start is the biggest problem when redecorating. That’s why using your favourite piece of furniture or art as colour inspiration for the rest of your rooms is a great place to begin planning your room design.
5. Ignore Everything We’ve Just Said & Have Some Fun!
Decorating doesn’t have to be serious. Have a little bit of fun. Life is too short for beige!
The most important thing though is to choose what YOU like!
At the end of the day, you’re the only person who has to like where you live. It’s something we say all of the time and no matter how much experience we gain it’s an opinion that never changes.
There’s no point even thinking about decorating a certain way if you’re not sure that you’ll love it and who cares if everyone else hates it?
I’ll never forget telling people we were planning on painting our dining room black (it’s actually a dark blue) and everyone we’ve now told that we’re thinking of painting the living room in our new home black has had what looked like a minor stroke. Yes, it seems radical but it’s also exciting, bold and daring!
Overall, it’s worth taking risks. Unless you’re spending a fortune on fancy wallpaper, painting and decorating is usually the easiest and cheapest way to almost instantly change the way your home looks and feels.
How do you choose colours? Do you have a go-to way of decorating? What’s your favourite colour?
This was just the article I needed! Because we just can’t settle on a color scheme we decided to just paint everything white for the time being (once it’s ready to paint that is…). Peronally I like some color as well, but my husband doens’t really and I just don;t know where to start. So this is a big help! Might finally get me started on the actual finished product instead of just focussing on tiles and where the light switches have to be :)
That was good timing! I can never quite work out why choosing colours is so difficult! At the end of the day, it’s only paint so the worst that can happen is that you have to repaint at some point in the future. Getting stuff right like your light switches is definitely way more important – even if it’s a lot less exciting!
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