Colour palette

from Home Improver - The Feng Shui Edition Nov 2020

by Independent Media Digital Magazines

Trending: Divide and rule

Paint your palette

cool & calmWORDS VIVIEN HORLER

Colour has a strong effect on our emotions and can influence our moods. It is important to give thought to the shades you choose for your home

DAN COOK

PICTURE

THE PSYCHOLOGY

THE COLOURS with which we surround ourselves can have an enormous effect on how we feel. Without even realising it, our emotions can be dictated by the colour of a room. Yellow can make us feel bright and sunny, dishwater beige can feel dreary. Knowing this, you can use colour to change a room’s energy: cheerful, cosy, calm or restful.

Violet and purply shades are associated with wisdom and the mind. They can be wonderfully soothing and calming for bedrooms, helping us to sleep.

Soft blues inspire creativity and communication, both of which make them suitable for a home office. Blues are cool, and not distracting, and also introduce the restless energy of the sea.

Creamy pinks are the colour of love. They invoke the beauty of garden roses and are calming and restful. Pink is such a powerfully soothing colour that it has been used in prisons to calm inmates.

Yellows and oranges are vibrant, stimulating and cheerful. They are lovely for home offices but are not so great for small spaces as they can be overwhelming. Yellow is a good colour for southfacing rooms that get little sun as it will brighten them up.

THE HOW TO

Different colours evoke different moods. When decorating a room, you need a combination of colours to rescue the eye from monochrome boredom.

Paint is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to transform a space, so start there.

“Research suggests we feel cooler in coolertoned rooms and warmer in warmer-toned rooms, so this is a way to steer a space to your comfort zone,” says Toby Israel, an expert in the field of environmental psychology.

Mine your memory for colours that have sentimental value and steer clear of those that trigger negative emotional responses.

Relaxing colours are not very saturated and relatively bright. Glossy paint is generally more stimulating than matt.

Here are three tips for home decorators when it comes to selecting suitable colours.

Colours fall into two groups, warm and cool. This means that it makes sense to pair colours with similar temperatures.

Cool hues, such as greens and blues, work well; and so do a mix of warm neutrals, like soft beige with rich brown.

Monochrome works if you think tone on tone. Colours within the same hue but slightly different tones – for example baby blue with a deep blue – will always look stunning.

Complementary colours – those opposite each other on the colour wheel – are always a win.

These would include, for example, coral with blue-green tones; turquoise and cream; copper-green and purple; light blue and pearly pink; and coral and lilac.

And then, of course, there’s pink and khaki – because as we all know, khaki goes with everything.

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