Color is what gives life an added layer of interest, intrigue, and overall excitement. There is something comforting and joyful about seeing how the correctly paired hues can interact with their environment to create spaces that can boost your mood, relax your mind, and simply make you feel utterly at ease as soon as you walk into a room. By selecting the right colors for your home, you can create a space that matches your personality and offers all of the above, all with minimal effort on your part (as long as you’re handy with a paintbrush, of course!) Here, we’re looking at how you can transform your home by ensuring that you choose the right colors for whatever atmosphere you’re trying to achieve.
Understand Color Psychology Before Investing In Any Materials Or Hiring Contractors
If you’re just browsing the web for a few pointers on how to start the process of painting your house, you might very well roll your eyes at the mention of color psychology. While that’s a fair reaction, after all, the web seems to be filled with unrelated slop these days, but the fact of the matter is that by spending a bit of time getting to know how different colors create different moods and feelings, you can avoid spending a fortune on hues that simply don’t sit well once they’re on the walls. So, when it comes to interior house painting, what are we talking about with regard to human psychology? Essentially, different colors have been shown to elicit differing emotions and responses in our minds, and as such, the colors you use in various rooms will have a considerable impact on the atmosphere and general “feel” of the space.
- Warm Colors (Reds, Oranges, Yellows): As you might imagine, warmer hues are primarily associated with passion, happiness, and general joy. Using these colors in a room will elevate the mood by boosting the feeling of energy.
- Cool Colors (Blues, Greens, Purples): Generally speaking, cooler shades are associated with relaxation and calm, making them perhaps best in bedrooms and living rooms where unwinding is the name of the game. However, you can also use them in your kitchen to generate a feeling of space and freshness.
- Neutral Colors (Whites, Grays, Browns): Neutral might sound dull to most folks, but they absolutely have their place. If you’re trying to create a minimal aesthetic, these colors will offer the best outcomes and help establish a sense of groundedness.
The colors you choose will have a much more significant impact on how you feel about your space than you might think, so investing in the various hues and their subsequent associations will help you select the right option.
Use Neutrals To Balance Vibrancy Where It Makes Sense
To follow on ever so slightly from the previous point, neutral colors can contribute a lot more to an aesthetic than simply being a color that you choose because you can’t agree with your significant other! If your home is already a place of vibrancy and joy, a splash of brown, greys, and off-whites can help with balancing things and lower the energy. Why might you want to reduce the energy, you might ask? Well, obviously, this is up to you and how you live your life, but sometimes, an aesthetic can be too overpowering and never allow you to switch off and relax entirely. Your home is a place where you ought to feel most comfortable and at ease, and if there is too much color, you might discover that you’re never able to decompress.
Incorporate Natural Light To Really Show Off Your New Colors
Now, we move on to what we can consider to be more of a feature than anything else. Incorporating natural light is an amazing idea for many reasons, but when we consider it in relation to the colors you choose, it can really help show them off in their best light. If you’re struggling to add more light or unable to increase your budget to extend to skylights, etc., you can utilize the famous mirror trick that is oh-so-popular among interior designers. We are, of course, talking about using mirrors, which also happens to lead very nicely to our next point!
Utilize Mirrors To Expand Spaces And Create A Feeling Of Openness
Mirrors have long been used by all sorts of people and in all manner of homes for the purposes they’re intended for (to show your reflection), but also to generate the illusion of more light, openness, and airiness even when inside a tiny room. In many ways, when you use a mirror strategically, you are able to create entirely new spaces that hit differently. For instance, if you’re in a living room with only one small window, you can place a farmed mirror opposite it to reflect and bring some of the outdoors inside. It also means that you are amplifying the natural light that comes from that window, making it almost as though you have double the number of windows and reaping the benefits of having such.
Create Accent Walls To Form Focal Points
An accent wall might be a worn-out option for many who are seeking something a little more contemporary, but the fact is that when they’ve been crafted tastefully, you can really add a sense of symmetry and focus to any room. They usually work best in rooms that already have some sort of focus point, like a fireplace or indented or extruded wall, but with a bit of careful thought, they should work almost anywhere.
Select Indoor Plants That Complement The New Style
There is something exquisite about bringing in some of the outdoors inside (and not just in the sense of using the aforementioned mirror!) Plants can create a sense of freshness that you are generally unable to achieve from anything else, and if you opt for the species that are most straightforward to care for, you’ll find that they only require the most minimal of maintenance while providing you with something that you will never be able to acquire from artificial techniques.
Transforming your home from the humdrum and decidedly average to a space that truly represents who you are needn’t be overly complex. These tips should get you started on the right track, and with a little more research, you’ll end up with a home you’re proud to have put in the effort.
