subject: Decorating Your New Home - Using Colour [print this page] Imagine a world without colour, if everything you saw was in black and white. Okay if you appreciate the minimalist style, however, for those of you that require a splash of colour in their life, it is important to understand the aesthetics of colour and how to make colour work in your new home.
Starting with a brief history of colour, it all began with primary colours, discovered from a prism of light in the form of a rainbow. Primary colours can be mixed to form secondary colours, from which a much more exciting palette can then be introduced with various tertiary shades and tints to give us the variations of colour charts that we have from various paint manufacturers today.
Dependant on your room theme, colour will portray the look in the form of how much light it reflects, the accent colours that can be complemented with it and what era or theme it is attempting to create, if any.
An accent colour should preferably be a vibrant colour that should be used to complement the room in the form of scatter cushions, a decorative vase, rug or lampshade. To give you an idea, if you choose to have a duck egg shade on your walls in your living room with a chocolate-coloured leather sofa, a suggested accent for this colour scheme would perhaps be either red or fuschia pink.
If you are looking for the colours of the season, it all boils down to basics and being at one with nature. Greens, purples, golds and neutrals are current trends. They are not only trendy, however, but can be timeless if used correctly with certain shades and hues.
Working again with tints and shades taken from primary colours, blue suggests a cool, fresh theme for a room, with its neighbour green offering similar qualities which also offer calm and tranquillity. Again, with these two colours, there are many hues to obtain a cooler or warmer take to the room.
The yellow theme starts from neutrals - magnolia - into mid-shade golds to fully vibrant sunflower yellows. Neutrals are advisable if you are unsure as to what theme you require and can always add a touch of pizzazz by using an accent colour as described earlier.
Finally, red. Starting with pastel pinks moving into burgundy and vibrant reds can be most versatile in a room and is a great colour for a feature wall too.
