A blank canvas?
Decorating with color in your house or apartment may seem to you like a blank canvas waiting for a novice painter to spatter their paint all over it and produce a hideous mess.
Many of us only start decorating when we need to, and because it's so infrequent we don't get much practice.
But there are ways of approaching decorating which can ease the decision making process. Here are some of those ways.
Go with the size
How size influences your color choice
The size of your house or apartment will influence how you plan your decorating with color. If it is large, then you can afford to have different color schemes in each room. The only thing you have to remember is to make sure that there is some continuity from one scheme to the next. This is particularly important in doorways and in corridors. You need to make sure all the different textures and patterns work together. One way is to have neutral colors on the floors and walls in the corridors and stairs. You can then have more definite colors and patterns in the individual rooms, and the neutral colors won't 'fight' with them.
You could use one of the color groups as a basis for your designs. Suppose you wanted to use complementary schemes for decorating with color. Each room could have a complementary scheme of its own, but with some unifying factor. For example, each room would have to use aqua blue somewhere, but it could be as a main color in one room and an accent color in another.
Or if you wanted to use contrasts of tone, you could decide that yellow would be the base hue, and all rooms would use tints and shades of that yellow as their main color.
Then again, you might decide that you wanted to have a complete change in each room. One would use contrasts of tone, another a primary scheme, a third would use hue harmony, and so on.
If you are working with a much smaller area when you're decorating with color, then it make sense to create a more harmonious whole. You can do this by selecting your color palette based on whatever scheme you choose. Then you use those colors in different proportions in all the rooms.
Suppose you chose four colors based on harmony of hue. We'll call them A, B, C and D. In room 1, use A on the walls, and B and C in smaller areas. In room 2, use D on the walls, and A and B in smaller amounts. You get the idea? Because they are all in harmony, the colors in each room will also be harmonious. And because you use all four colors everywhere, the whole house or apartment will appear harmonious.
If you are using carpets, it's quite often a good idea to have the same carpet everywhere. This has two advantages. First, it's usually less expensive and less wasteful to have the same carpet rather than different ones. Second, using the same carpet everywhere makes a smaller property look bigger, especially if the carpet is light in tone.
Don't forget you can also vary the style of each room. One could have painted walls, another could have a paint effect such as dragging, while a third could have wallpaper. You could have rugs of different sizes and colors, drapes in one room and shades in another. One room could have traditional furniture and another more contemporary items. All this can make a smaller property appear to have more to it than first appears.
When decorating with color, give a thought to the number of rooms and their sizes. Be aware of the space you have and think how you can use it to its best advantage.
