Colour is the secret to setting the mood and having a cohesive style and flow throughout your home. Choosing a Colour palette for your whole home is at the heart of interior design, but with such a vast array of colours available at your local Resene ColorShop, narrowing down your selection can seem tricky.
It can seem especially difficult as most home colour palettes should only consist of three to five hues. This might seem limiting at first, but sticking to a Colour Palette will make your home more aesthetically pleasing and comfortable to live in. So how do you go about choosing a definitive colour palette?
When picking out the colours that will define your home decor, consider these helpful tips.
Pinpointing your colour personality and decorating your home accordingly will make you feel comforted and satisfied.
1. Find out your colour personality
Pinpointing your colour personality and decorating your home accordingly will make you feel comforted and satisfied. Why? The colours will resonate with you and instantly make your home space feel welcoming. So what is a 'colour personality'?
People perceive colours differently based on their personal tastes and experiences. We all have slightly different preferences when it comes to colour, but we can broadly be grouped into four dominant colour categories.
Johannes Itten was among the first people to consider and evaluate successful colour combinations. Resene uses the broad seasonal colour palettes developed by Itten to guide you towards your colour personality profile. Take Resene's colour me test to find out what your colour personality is.
Once you have a clearer idea of the colours you naturally gravitate to, start to build your colour palette around these hues.
2. Where to find inspiration
Knowing the colours that match your personality is the first step; the second is to pick a select few hues to use throughout your home. To narrow it down, draw inspiration from the things you love. Artwork, rugs, or fabrics that you are particularly fond of are likely to be in colours you feel good about. Take a stroll and observe the colours in your favourite landscapes: the blues of the sea, shades of green in mountain scenes. Looking at a Resene colour chart is also a good place to start finding the tones and shades you want to incorporate in your colour scheme.
For extra help, you can use the Resene Colour Palette Generator. Choose a picture of a place you love, somewhere you've travelled to or even somewhere close to home, or a photo of a painting you treasure. Simply upload your image into the Colour Palette Generator and it will do the rest of the work for you, suggesting a palette based on the most commonly occurring colours in the picture.
3. Think about how you want your home to feel
Paint colour can influence and transform the overall feeling of a space, so it's important to factor this into your colour scheme. When selecting your colour palette, consider which feeling you want to achieve.
For a calm and relaxing feel, analogous colours create a harmonious theme. Analogous colours can be found together on the colour wheel, and share the same tones, for example Resene London Hue and Resene Kashmir Blue.
When selecting your colour palette, consider which feeling you want to achieve.
Bright colours and contrast are best for a more lively and high-energy space. This calls for complementary colours, or colours found in opposing positions on the colour wheel. Resene Lightning Yellow and Resene Bowie are examples of complementary colours.
A monochromatic theme is based around tones of the same colour (so, lighter and darker variations of one hue). Monochrome is a relaxing, modern and clean feeling theme. Picture a room with varying tones of blue, such as Resene Endeavour, Resene Picton Blue, and Resene Tranquil.
Once you know how you want your home to feel, whether that be soothing, inspiring, or exciting, you will be able to determine the colour palette best suited to your home.
