Photo by Flickr user Boa-Franc.
Creating depth in the walls of any interior – kitchen, bathroom, living room or lounge – is all about contrast. As a rule, lighter colors add space whereas darker colors can make a room seem smaller. If, for instance, you want to make a high ceiling appear lower and correspondingly more intimate, it’s a good idea to paint it a darker shade than the walls. By doing the same to a wall – painting one feature wall a darker hue than the other walls – you can similarly achieve the illusion of depth. This can be taken to a whole new level depending on the color you use and the emotions associated with that color.
Color affects human beings on a lot of levels. White feels clean and sanitized, whereas green brings nature into the room, and a bright red can actually increase your heartbeat. Depriving human beings of light and color can make us more prone to Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD. When we’re fed up, we use a color to describe it – we’re “blue” or “browned off.” Color is a big deal and we should never under-value its importance. Look at corporate logos and the vast sums used to research and develop them. Color – its hue, tone, saturation and combination – is crucial to us and affects every aspect of our lives.
But using colors in the right combination to achieve the emotional impact you want isn’t always easy, which is what makes guides like “Colouring Your Home” so useful. Easy to digest, it is informative, full of information on warm and hot colors; saturated and unsaturated. The breakdown of color and associated emotions is absolutely invaluable for anyone who is thinking of decorating.
Whether your style is shabby chic or traditional, industrial or Baroque, the colors you apply to your home design can change any room dramatically. But if you have a good eye and are well-informed, you can control what you want to achieve to a much greater extent. Lets face it – you don’t want to get it wrong and have to start again or stick with something you’re not really happy with.
Professional designers model their interiors to get a feel of what they’ll look like and to show their clients a scaled down version of the final thing. You can do this yourself with a painted shoe box, or you can simply hold painted sheets of paper against one another. It’s a great way of exploring the various effects like depth and contrast that different colors and hues can achieve when they’re used together – and it doesn’t cost much either.
Happy decorating!
Infographic by Design55
