Selecting the right color for your modern living style.

Color

Color choice is basic to your decorating scheme. The imaginative use of color will ensure that your room is a success. You need to learn the simple rules of color to do a good job. An effective color scheme obeys certain basic rules having to do with the physical and psychological aspect of color. Very few people are such good judges of color that they can tell instantly whether or not different shades will go together. Most of us have to work at developing a sense of color.

Read more about ideas and tips to Choosing Color

Warm Colors
Red, orange and yellow colors tend to leap out at you. This is due to the fact that such colors correspond to the longer wavelengths of light and hence demand maximum adjustment from our eyes, a physical fact we interpret as stimulus or arousal. Warm colors make good accents; in larger doses, they generate a sense of coziness and enclosure.

Cool Colors
Blue, violet, blue-gray and blue-green have short wavelengths and are inherently soothing. Cool colors enhance the sense of spaciousness, but if the quality of the natural light is poor they can be a little chilly.

Greens
These shades fall in the middle of the spectrum and are the most restful colors of all because our eyes have to adjust very little to see them.

Natural Colors
The subtle tones of wood, stone and earth evoke a sense of integrity which derives from their association with the natural world. The neutrals- white, black and gray - can be used to provide definition and breathing space in color schemes.

Complementary Colors
Blue and orange, red and green, yellow and purple are complementary. One of the easiest ways of coming up with a color scheme is to use complementary pairs in a range of tones from light to dark. The lightest shades can be used for backgrounds; the darkest or strongest for accents.

Tertiary Colors
Terracotta and turquoise, which hover on the cusp between one color and the next, have an edgy luminous quality which adds a sense of vitality.

Pastel Palette
Colors seem gentle and nostalgic (i.e., lemon yellow, bird egg blue, pistachio, mint, pearl gray, milk white, etc.). These colors look good with birch or pale maple woods and Danish laminated chairs in different colors. Add a little shiny chrome or galvanized steel. Martha Stewart most often uses the pastel palette in her designs. Keep in mind that pastels look best in soft diffused light.

Scandinavian Palette
The most sophisticated and offers discreet luxury, it was designed to be complementary with natural materials such as bare wood floors and wooden venetian blinds or shutters. Predominant paint color include all shades of brown, cream, gray and green. For the Scandinavian palette, the furniture needs to be paired down to a few key pieces. The look is more about space and light.

Retro Modern Palette
It is based around the three primary colors of red, yellow and blue with splashes of black, white and gray. Furniture fabrics are more a plain weave so there is less dilution of the visual impact. Floors are generally light and furniture kept to a minimum so that the color can take center stage. Kitsch should be in strict control.

Help creating your color palette:
Visit Colour Lovers where they offer over 1 million user created colors to inspire your creative projects. Sometimes it helps just to look at a variety of color combinations to help fine tune what fits best with your style.

Using the Color Wheel:
The color wheel portrays the relationship among the three primary colors of red, blue and yellow. The three secondary colors that result from mixing tow primary colors are purple, green and orange. Tertiary colors are derived by mixing a primary with a secondary color, which simply brings a greater focus of one primary color over the other.

There is an entire vocabulary associated with the color wheel, but rather than go through that, here's what you really want to focus on... Related or analogous color schemes usually combine three neighboring colors from the color wheel. These schemes can be warm or cool, since the colors are adjacent on the color wheel and therefore usually share these attributes. Complementary color schemes use two colors opposite each other on the color wheel. These schemes are bold and often intriguing. They can be difficult to pull off because the contrasts are bold and placing them side by side makes them seem more intense, but they can be effective if done properly. Mixing complementary colors tends to relax the eye because the colors move toward gray. This is often seen with traditional modern color schemes. Triadic schemes are based on three colors equally spaced around the color wheel, such as red, yellow and blue. These can be the most sophisticated, since the relationships among the colors are the most abstract. Experiment with intensity and values in a triadic color scheme for the best results. A red, yellow and blue scheme with all colors of the same intensity might seem too bright, but deep red and navy blue with pale yellow or deep gold used as an accent might work fine.

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