Colour Crises, and How to Avoid Them
(with a little bit of history and science thrown in!) Eleni Fantis, Omorfia Interior Design Colour quandaries when decorating, whether it’s paint, tile, flooring, or furnishings, are probably the most common dilemmas that we all go through at some point – I am still scarred from the memory of painting my dining room three times in five days until I got the exact tone of blue that was in my head!
It’s important to remember, when faced with the thousands of options available in, for example, DIY stores’ paint-mixing departments, that you are only considering which one of seven colours of the spectrum to use… yes, you read that right – you are simply choosing one of seven colours and then deciding on a tone or shade of that colour. The colour wheel (developed by Sir Isaac Newton in 1666) goes further in its visual representation of 12 colours, split into warm and cool shades and made up of three primary colours, three secondary colours (created by mixing two primaries) and six tertiary colours (created from a mix of a primary and a secondary colour). The wheel is used in a vast number of industries and arts; in interior design it illustrates which hues coordinate well, depending on the type of scheme you are going for. Broadly speaking, your room colour palette will be either ‘Harmonious’ (using two adjacent colours on the wheel), ‘Tonal’ or ‘Monochromatic’ (using various shades of the same colour), or ‘Contrasting’ (using colours opposite each other on the wheel). I always advocate that your home should reflect your personal likes and dislikes, and that you shouldn’t feel constricted by trends or design ‘rules’. There are, however, considerations that you should follow to maximise your homes potential and your love for it:
