Have you toured a show house or model home and thought, “How can I get my house to look like this?”. There are many elements that go into designing and decorating a beautiful home, but the balance of color is key. It’s the element that will make your home “flow” as you progress from one room to the next.

• The Rule of Three ~ When decorating your home, select a palette of three colors you would like to have as the primary colors in your home. These colors would be used for your paint, fabrics, area rugs and accessories. Neutrals, such as whites/beiges/tans and blacks/soft grays don’t technically count as colors, so you don’t need to consider them as much, unless you’re working with an all-neutral palette (see below).  The same applies to stained wood furniture and hardwood flooring.

• Proportion of Color ~ Individual rooms in your home can showcase all three colors in your palette, or just one or two of them. If you choose to use more than one color in a room, one of those colors should be the dominate color. For example, if your palette is red, blue and green, use a formula such as 60% green, 30% red and 10% blue. The idea is to have a tier of color, with a dominate, subordinate and accent. If you only use two colors, work with a 70% to 30% ratio. I designed the master bedroom of this French style condo, and the inspiration fabric was the embossed red velvet on the bed frame.  The condo was a palette of red, purple and gold, but as you can see I only used the red and gold above, with red being the dominant color repeated in the bed, shams and draperies.  On the other side of the room is this beautiful chaise lounge in an embossed velvet pattern of purple and gold.  That’s our 10%. : )

If you’re working with a neutral color palette, you would approach this proportion theory the same way, except that you would vary your “colors” by shades of light-medium-dark.

• Kids’ Rooms Don’t Count ~ This is one instance where you can break the rules of the color scheme. Children’s rooms are fun and unique to them, and most likely never match the rest of the home’s color palette. So, go ahead and let them express themselves!

Selecting colors for your home can be challenging, especially with the thousands of choices!  If the idea of doing this on your own has your head spinning a bit, my Designer Download™ session can help and is a great way to get started.  It’s one session, with lots of answers, at one affordable price.

Design should be fun, not stressful!

~ Kathy