She’s a Rainbow
At some point in your life, you are going to have to pick out the color of something in your home. For a lot people that idea is really intimidating, confusing and even paralyzing. It’s the beginning of spring here in the Northern Hemisphere at least, and I know that spring is an inspiring time to clean house, clear things out, freshen up, and sometimes that includes maybe a new coat paint, bringing in something new like changing heavy winter bedding into something lighter for summer- and these are great opportunities for us to consider how we use color our spaces.
Today, we are going to get loaded up on the basics of working with color in your space, whether you want a super neutral space or something that is a maximalist dream come true - and everywhere in between.
The reason color is important in that full spectrum of space flavors is that everything has a color. I’ve talked about this in previous episodes, even things we perceive as being plain, or neutral, or natural - it all had a color to it. The light in a space has a color to it, fixed objects in a space have color to them. So the first thing you need to do, if you are trying to make decision around color in a space, is to almost do a little mindfulness practice. In your mind, and with your eyes, scan the room you want to change. Look at everything, one piece at a time, every element that is already in your space that isn’t going anywhere, you’re not changing it, you’re not getting ride of them or covering them up - and name the color of each element. Even If you’re starting with what feels like a blank slate, there are fixed elements to consider. Think about materials in your space like the glass on your windows, do they it have a green-blue tint to them or maybe a slight smokiness? What about the sash and frame around the windows? Is it painted white, or black, or maybe it’s a wood. Wood can vary wildly in color depending on the species and finish. You might not know the species and thats okay. But- you can tell if its dark, light, yellow, brown, red, orange, maybe it’s even gray wood? Are there metals in your space like door knobs, vents, a faucet. - are they silver, or gold, brass, or black? What color are your floors? How many materials are in your space and can you name the colors of each material? Try writing each color down, and notice how reading them makes you feel. That is critical. You might get even more information about how you feel about your space. How bright is each color in your room? How light or dark are they?
Starting with a fundamental palette of what is already in your space is crucial in any decision making going forward about what color a wall or a piece of furniture should be. So many times, I have friends who will send me little snippets and pictures of things they are considering for their space, and they’ll ask me if I like it. My first question is always “what else is in the room?”
The goal is for everything to look cohesive and this step is critical in making that happen. Now, I know that it can feel a little restrictive to deal with elements that you have to keep, especially if they are things that you aren’t necessary fond of. As a renter, I feel this deeply because half of what comes in a rentals interior is not in our control, but this is true even if you own your space because not everyone can gut renovate whenever the mood strikes for a refresh. But the whole concept of taking a good inventory of the existing elements in your space is so you can make choices for the things you can control that elevate your space and make the things you might feel less excited about feel more integrated and part of the interior design family. Once you have all of your base colors identified, you can begin your color adventure.
I get asked questions about color a lot from friends and family. I love talking about it. I think picking out materials and colors is one of my favorite parts of my job. I find it really relaxing. It’s kind of like solving a puzzle, but instead of the pieces needing to fit together, the colors need to play nice together.
People will ask me how many accent colors is too much? How do I make sure color doesn’t detract from the rest of the room? How do I do I know if an element should be a color or a neutral?
The answer to these are a little bit more complicated, and before I dive into it all, I want to say that color selection is a great reason to hire an interior designer. Even if it’s just for an hour long consult to review what you think you want to do, a designer’s eye is trained to make fast selections that work together almost as a reflex. Now that being said, if you want to do it yourself, there isn’t a magic bullet. You’ve gotta get your color theory training, and I am going to get you started.
When I get asked a color question, I often think back to my very first studio class in college, where we utilized what’s called a color wheel. If you haven’t used a color wheel before, think of a a pie that’s divided into 12 slices, and each slice is a color of the rainbow. This wheel looks almost childlike in its simplicity of primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. Some of these color wheels are even hand held objects that spin around to teach lessons about different color schemes. But I can promise you, as elementary as it seems, every single item that we’re going to touch on today stems from a lesson that the color wheel teaches us. It’s a powerful tool and you can find images of a color wheel online or pick one up at your local art supply shop.
The color wheel provides us with a determined set of color schemes, that allows us to mix and match colors in a structured way. The first of which is deceptively simple. This is a monochromatic color scheme. You’re working with one single color, and you can use different shades and hues (or lights and darks) of this color. This may be tempting to use because it seems so simple. It’s just one color, so theoretically there’s less coordinating. But using this scheme in an interiors space can often come across as harsh and flat. It puts a lot of pressure on that one color to really carry the whole room. It’s successful when it’s a color you know you love, and you may be a little obsessive and feel the need to control of your surroundings. But again, I mentioned before, most spaces won’t be truly monochromatic because of all the surrounding architectural materials. Unless you’re going to great lengths to make sure every square inch and detail are all the same color - which actually ends up feeling more like you’re on a set of a music video or an art installation. And if thats the feel you want - go for it.
Next we have an analogous color scheme. This is three or more color directly next to each other on the color wheel. For example blue, blue-green, and green. This is probably my favorite and most used color scheme. I think it has the cohesiveness of a monochromatic scheme, but feels softer and more forgiving, and honestly has the intended affect, that honest I think a lot of people go to a monochromatic scheme for, without the rigidity.
And now something completely different - we’ll look at the complimentary color scheme. So this is when you use two colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel, for example - red and green. Now, this is where you must exercise caution because as fun as this scheme can be, this is where color can really work against us. A complimentary color scheme creates strong contrast. It’s dynamic and energizing, but it can go sideways quick. This color scheme is often used for professional sports teams (can you count how many pro teams use blue and orange as their colors) and festive holidays - think Christmas, Mardi gras, even Halloween to an extent. We haven’t talked about this yet, but just color theory 101 - the three primary colors of pigment are red, yellow, and blue. Meaning these are essential colors that cannot be created by combining other colors. All other colors are combinations of these three colors, plus black or white. A complimentary color scheme typically includes one primary color, and the secondary that results from mixing the other two remaining primary colors. So red, and then blue and yellow make green. So any time you are looking at a complimentary color scheme you are looking at all three primary colors in some form. This is stimulating. And while it can be super fun for a day or even a few weeks, it will eventually get over stimulating, depending on how sensitive a person is, of course.
Part of the reason this happens is whats refereed to as color vibration. And this is not the good kind of vibration we’re talking about. Color vibration is when the color boundaries almost feel blurred and there’s an optical illusion of motion because the two colors are so high contrasting. They are essentially creating visual friction. When two perfectly complementary colors (meaning they are opposite each other on the color wheel and both fully saturated) - are placed directly next to each other - vibration will occur.
Now, saturation is the term used to describe the intensity of a color - pure bright red is fully saturated, and to lower the saturation of a color you would dull it down by adding gray or its opposite (green). A black and white photograph is completely desaturated. Part of the reason vibration occurs is because your eye doesn’t know where to rest, the colors are both intensely bright, but so different, it’s hard to determine hierarchy. Your eye is basically reacting to not knowing what to look at. The best example of this is on a bad website that has color text on a colored background, but it does happen to a lesser extent in an interior space if, for example, you put a green piece of furniture on a red carpet. This will be unpleasant to look at for anyone, unless of course they’re colorblind, which should probably be its own episode.
But hey, if you’ve fallen in love with a complimentary scheme and you just have to have it in your home, there is hope. There’s two things you can do - either one or both of them. First, you can lower the saturation of both colors and make one lighter and one darker - bright orange and bright blue screams I love the NY Rangers. Burnt orange and sky blue say I love interior design. The second thing you can do is to limit the amount and location if each color. The goal is keep these as fun pops through out the space, separated by lots of neutrals. You could try orange drawer handles on a dresser and a small amount of bright blue in a patterned fabric on an accent chair. But, never the two shall meet.
Another way of working with high contrast colors is to use the cousin scheme Split Complimentary. This is a more subtle play on the complimentary scheme / instead of color opposites on the wheel, it’s one color and the secondary colors on either side of its opposite, so red - reds opposite is green but rather then including green, you’d use yellow-green and blue-green. I love this color scheme personally because you get the refinement of analogous with the the contrast of the complimentary.
Shifting this scheme to have even more contrast, we move into the triad scheme. This is a three color combo that includes any three colors equidistant from each other on the wheel. So using the twelve color wheel its every fourth color. This scheme can be super playful, and is a good way to get a wide variety of colors in a space. Any time you see all three primary colors used as a color scheme, like a Mondrian painting, thats a triad color scheme.
Add a fourth color and you’ve got a Tetradic color scheme. This is combining two sets of complimentary colors that form a rectangle shape on the wheel. This is a complex scheme but it does offer some harmony between each set of compliments. With this many colors, you’ll want pick one to take the lead and let the other three be back up dancers.
I want to say that I’m a color fanatic. I love using many colors in many places, it speaks to me on a soul level and just makes me so darn happy. If you want to use a lot of color, but still want your scheme to look intentional, I like the trick of selecting a hue and saturation for all your colors, so that means going with something like all jewel tones or all pastels, and then intentionally omitting one color in the wheel. Presently, I have nothing that is the color red in my space, but pretty much every other color is represented.
In my professional life it’s more about temperature of grays, the undertone of whites. Warmer grays are showing up everywhere now to the point of beige being completely acceptable again.
I love watching trends cycles it’s so interesting to me. I remember probably five years ago designing offices in New York City - cool toned grays were the only Acceptable way to go, and obviously now that has shifted. There’s always a geographic to trends with color. I will have conversation with manufacturers from fabric companies, furniture companies, tile companies - and they would laugh about how gray was the way of life in New York, but if was very different in the south, or California, where a little more color and warmth was expected.
Whatever neutral is in style, these hues are some of the most important to pay attention to when it comes to color. Grays, whites, and off-whites are the most tricky to work with because every neutral color is essentially a desaturated color from the color wheel. So, there’s always a little hint of the color in the neutral, and it becomes very apparent when you start putting neutrals next to each other. You could have a gray color - whether it’s a paint or a fabric - that just looks like plain old gray, until you paint the wall next to it a warm, almost peachy cream color, add all of a sudden that gray’s green undertones are popping, because you’ve basically unintentionally created a complimentary color scheme, and what you wanted to be a very soft neutral space is all of a sudden stimulating like crazy.
I’ve talked about lighting temperature before on this podcast, but the color and pigments of objects have temperatures as well, and matching temperatures of neutrals is key in coordinating a space.
Neutrals fall into two temperature categories - warm or cool. Warm neutrals use the first half of the color wheel as their base - red/orange/yellow. Cool neutrals use blues and purples as their bases. Any gray tones or other neutrals that use green as their base can land in either category- depending on how much blue or yellow is in that green. So, if you are looking to create a neutral space, you’ll what to select a color temperature and stick with it. This is where getting samples of what you want to use is so crucial. If you have a rug in your room, and you want to paint the walls a new color, you have to look at the paint samples right next to the rug so you can see what undertones they bring out in each other. You’ll need to look at your samples at different times of the day, with and without the lights on, because lighting changes perception of color so much. Take a fee steps back, walk away from your samples, squint your eyes at them. You’re gut will tell you what you need to know and if you’re still not sure, ask a trusted friend who’s good with color! It’s never a bad idea to get a second opinion.
If you do have two neutrals that are different temperatures, you can still work with them by introducing something with a little contrast. This doesn’t have to be something with a strong color, but rather something that is a little darkness to it to ground everything. If everything in the space is the same light tone, the room can feel empty and unfinished, unless you have a lot of texture there. So, bringing in an element with contrast is important when you’re working with neutrals. Otherwise things will feel literally bland.
The last thing I’ll touch on today is something I talk about with almost any design topics and that is hierarchy. When you’re working with color, just as when you’re working with pattern and scale, creating a hierarchy helps give visual balance to a space, meaning you select a dominant color, a secondary color, and a few supporting colors. This principle is the same whether you’re working with fully saturated unicorn rainbows, or a completely neutral serene space.
I hope this dive into color was helpful. If you have any follow up questions about color, feel free to message me on the podcast Instagram @softlandingpodcast. I would love to follow up with all your color questions, this is a topic that is so near and dear to my heart. I hope you are having a great rest of your day, and I will talk to you in the next episode.
