Are you looking to create a beautiful color palette for your home? Are you confused about how you can combine different colors in a cohesive way? Well, today we go through everything. From some basics of color theory to different types of color palettes that you can create. Step-by-step how you’re going to create a wonderful, cohesive color palette for your home. The first thing I want to get out of the way is the importance of light on color. Light completely changes color. I cannot state that strongly enough. So a paint that works in my living room is not necessarily what’s going to work in my bathroom. It will appear very different. It’ll appear completely different in your living room will always look different.
My advice to you on this. Always get samples of paint or fabric swatches or whatever you need to make sure that it’s all gonna work together and the rest of the color palette. Get it in your home, see what it looks like in your lighting. It will look different than it does in the shop. It’ll look different than it does here in my apartment. Always make sure you get samples because it will change everything. Let’s do some basics of color theory. I promise it’ll be interesting and you’re gonna learn something from it and that will really help you to create a beautiful color palette for your home.
How to Use the Color Wheel to Pick Your Perfect Color Palette
This is the old color wheel. We remember this from grade school. Okay. So first let’s talk about color and temperature. So there are cool colors and then there are warm colors on the color wheel, right? The cool ones are blues and greens. And then on the warm side, you’ve got red, oranges and yellows. The cooler color tones typically create a really suiting or sophisticated atmosphere in your space. Those can be really great for bedrooms cause you’re probably going to be sleeping there. Great for bathrooms, but those warmer spaces can be really energizing. They could be great for offices or kids’ playrooms taste. So let’s talk about something that I think really trips people up a lot, which is tints tones and shades. I feel like a lot of you have probably heard these words, but you don’t necessarily like super understand what they mean.
How to Use Tint and Tones to Build Color Schemes
The tint is just looking at all those different colors that exist on the outside of that color wheel. And it’s adding white to those different colors. If you take something like red and you add a lot of white to it, it’s going to change. And it’s going to become pink. And tones just mean that you take those colors or those hues that are on the outside of the color wheel and you add gray to them. Typically what happens when you add gray to some of these colors is they just become more de-saturated and become like they’re kind of primary, really bold selves. And they start to become a little bit more toned down. That’s probably where we got that from. So they look a lot more de-saturated and tones are really important because these colors can look really beautiful in your space.
They’ll always have different undertones of the primary color, but by adding gray to that primary sort of pigment, you’re able to create something more de-saturated. Honestly, in a living space, it’s going to probably look a lot better on your walls or your furniture than if you maybe were to use those really, really bright colors.
A bit about Shades
The third one that I want to talk about is called shades and probably figured out what that one is. And that is when you add black to these different colors. So if you take a color like green and you start adding black to it, um, it’ll start to get a lot richer and a lot darker. So that’s tints, tones, and shades. When we’re talking about the different color palettes it’s about the different color schemes and combinations that you can go through. I think it’s crucial to understand that we don’t just mean adding these primary colors together.
We’re talking about all the tones and shades that exists within that color wheel. When you look at kind of those little slices of pie that exists all around the color wheel of all the different tints, tones and shades, you really start to see that there’s actually millions of colors that you have to choose from. I feel like people go like blue and orange. That might work. But there’s actually thousands of different colors that exist within those two colors. That’s really important to understand as we move on to creating a palette.
Monochromatic Palette
Now moving on to different color palettes. You have a few different options here and there are other options, but I’m going to stick to the three primary ones. The first one to talk about is monochromatic. Monochromatic just means taking one of those different slices of pie and just basically working with all the tints tones and shades that exist in that color. If you want to create a monochromatic blue space, that would mean you’re working with every different color that exists within this little slice of blue to be able to create for your space. Monochromatic schemes can be really beautiful, really purposeful, and let’s look some really great examples.
Analogous Palette
The second type of color palette I want to talk about is called analogous. And that means that you’re looking at two or three different slices of the pie of the color wheel that sit next to each other. These ones work together because they sit next to each other on the color wheel. For example, if you were wanting to design a red, orange and yellow space, you’d be working with all the tints, tones and shades that exist in that three different sections of the color wheel. Again, this gives you loads of options to create a beautiful space. Let’s look at some more examples.
Home Interior
A Сomplementary Color Scheme
And then the third type of color scheme, which is in many ways, probably one of my favorites and that is a complementary color scheme. So this is working with, again, all the tints, tones and shades that exist on two colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel. This is really great for a couple of reasons. I love this first of all, because there’s a certain contrast that comes with using a complementary color scheme. You just don’t necessarily get as much from analogous or from a monochromatic scheme. So you’re definitely getting a lot of contrast, which is kind of creating a sort of visual appeal from these two colors that exist opposite each other. And the second reason is that it’s a really great way to combine warm and cool colors on the color wheel.
That was a question I got a lot on my how to choose a neutral paint. If you’re able to reinforce the different colors from these two different sections of the color wheel, you’re going to create something really cohesive and really beautiful. Look at some gorgeous examples of complementary color schemes.
Now we understand that there are different tints, tones, and shades, which you need within each color. We also understand that there are different ways that you can build a color palette. Let’s talk about the third way, which is how do you combine them in a really cohesive way?
Creating Own Rhythm
And the good news there is a design principle called rhythm. All that rhythm really means is that when you start to repeat shapes and color and pattern and texture throughout a space, it makes them look cohesive and work together. And color is one of the easiest ways for you to do this. So now that you’ve picked your color scheme and you understand how they’re going to work together, then all you need to do is start to really repeat them. Whether that means in really obvious ways like a blue pillow and a blue vase, or it could be in undertones that you’re using.
You might use white paint on the wall with a blue undertone that ties in well with a blue rug or a blue pillow, or maybe a couch that is gray, but has slight blue undertones. And you can start to see how you can pull these things together by repeating colors over and over in the space. It’s those different patterns that you see over and over in a space that visually speaks together. It makes every little thing sort of feel as it belongs there.
Now practically, let’s go through a real-world example of how I can do this for you, so you can see what would work for you? One of the first things I would go to is a great resource with awesome colors palettes on the website. You can take those different color families, all those different tints, tones, and shades combine them together into something really cohesive and really beautiful.
