How to Choose the Perfect Color Palette for Your Home

No matter if you’re painting just a few rooms or renovating an entire home, choosing the appropriate color palette can make an enormous impactful statement about who you are and your personality.

Start with your favorite color. Paint samples of it in different shades and tints and observe how they respond to different lighting at various times of day.

1. Start with Your Favorite Color

Selecting colors that will enhance the ambience and warmth of your interior space can be both essential and challenging. If there’s one color that makes you happy, use it as a starting point – perhaps artwork, rugs or flooring are something you love?

Designers agree that selecting three basic hues – primary, secondary and tertiary – for your palette can help establish the foundation of its overall color scheme and can be utilized throughout each room in different amounts.

Consider what emotion or mood you would like your home to convey, whether that is stimulating or relaxing. And don’t forget, gray doesn’t necessarily need to be all tan or white – many have cool undertones which give a more modern aesthetic!

2. Use a Color Wheel

Selecting colors for a room can be daunting enough, but finding an overall palette that works throughout your entire home is even harder. An overly coordinated look could give the appearance of “trying too hard,” while going too far the other way could leave your house full of clashing hues that won’t mix.

One effective strategy to help avoid this scenario is using a color wheel as your guide. Simply pick one color you like – like green for instance – and look at paint swatches of it several shades lighter and darker, to find your ideal palette hues. Complementary colors (those appearing opposite on the color wheel) can also add interest; yellow and orange shades for instance make striking combinations that add brightness to any space.

3. Think About Your Lifestyle

No matter your style of decor – be it colorful or neutral – creating a color palette can make decorating decisions much simpler. Additionally, using it consistently throughout your home helps create coherence between rooms even if they do not all follow the same theme.

Consider not only your design preferences, but also the types of activities you and your family engage in at home. A bold color may be overbearing for living room use but may serve well as an accent wall in bedroom settings.

As you select colors for your palette, keep in mind that their appearance in space depends on both natural light and time of day. I suggest working with three to five colors at most for your palette as any more can feel too similar and can cause clashing to take place. Your desired hues should feature both warm and cool tones for balance between them all.

4. Don’t Overdo It

As it can be easy to go overboard when choosing the colors for your home’s decor, choosing an excessive color palette may seem daunting. Your goal should be to create a harmonious space that expresses who you are while remaining inviting for guests and meeting your needs. A few expert tips may help prevent you from overdoing it and ensure you find an optimal combination of hues that suits your individuality and taste.

One effective strategy to strike a balance in design is the 60:30:10 rule of design, which suggests using your hero color for 60% of the space; its secondary shade for 30% and accent colors as 10% accent pieces. This will keep your room from looking too busy with too many different hues.

One essential step in striking the ideal balance is testing paint in both natural and artificial lighting environments. Color can change dramatically under various light sources, so taking the time to identify a hue that complements all settings is wise.

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