Develop your skills
One of the best ways of learning about decorating color schemes is to look at books and magazines. Make notes of the schemes you like, why you like them, and in this way you'll develop your own sense of color. It's a great way to improve your confidence in your home decorating skills.
But to help you in a practical way, we've prepared a series of color charts. These are grouped (approximately) into colors groups - yellows, reds, and so on.
How to use the charts
All the decorating color schemes are based on actual room settings. The charts are split into Main colors and Accent colors.
Under Main colors, the top left color is the one which determines the room color - usually the wall color, but sometimes the floor color if that was the most dominant. The other colors are used on other main areas such as floors and ceilings. Sometimes only one other color was used with the dominant color, sometimes as many as three.
Bedroom scheme using traditional colors and textures
The main color used in a room can sometimes be cleverly disguised. A room with a lot of decorative items in it, such as rugs, pictures, upholstery and ornaments, may have its main color dictated by these items. For example, these may all contain a particular shade of red. When you look at the room, you remember it as having this red color, as this is the color which predominates.
Under Accent colors are the (usually) more vibrant or deeper colors used in the room. These are colors used, for example, in fabrics, rugs, pictures, pillows or scatter cushions, and throws. When an accent color is a gold or sliver, it's usually used in ornate picture frames, or on a decorative piece of furniture.
Accent colors are normally ones with stand out, perhaps by contrasting with the background colors.
(See this example page for a real room setting using a color chart.)
Bedroom using blue color scheme
This is not "painting by numbers"!
Don't feel you have to exactly match these decorating color schemes, or have all of the colors in your scheme. You may decide to go with the main colors, but only use one or two of the accent colors. Or you may use just two main colors, and you have a rug which brings in four or five accent colors, and it looks good in the room.
In other words, just use these as inspiration, a starting point. Feel free to experiment and change the sample color schemes. As mentioned above, these are based on real decorating color schemes. Use them as a basis for your own colors, or just study them to see the sort of things you can do with colors in the home.
And don't forget texture. Many of the beiges in these schemes actually come from textured floor tiles, textured walls, fabrics and rugs. This gives the scheme an interest which is not apparent from just looking at the sample color schemes.
Links to the color charts
Here are the links to the color charts, which are divided into approximate color groups.
