Finding Color Inspiration

Remember back to when you were very young….and one of the first questions you posed to a new friend was, “what is your favorite color?”  Though your preference may have changed since then, most of us still have a color or two that we feel especially attracted or drawn to.   You may have a shirt or two in your closet right now in some shade of your favorite color, or touches of it somewhere in your home.  But when it comes to bringing color into our lives on a much larger scale, we often lose confidence or grow anxious about making color choices. 

When it comes to decorating your new home, do you consider yourself color challenged?  Are you living with a bland, milk-toast interior that doesn’t reflect your sensibilities?  Would you like to transform a particular room or your whole home with a new color scheme, but you don’t know where to begin?  Start with your favorite colors!  What colors inspire you and make you feel good?

The Color Effect

Color not only changes our perception of a space; specific hues and their various saturations and intensities affect our senses, moods and even our physical well being.  Color can actually impact the quality of our lives.  Sound like a strong statement?  Maybe you haven’t considered that before…but I strongly believe it to be true!

So how are we impacted by color?  Some hues are energizing and uplifting.  Others are quieting and calming.  Let’s examine how specific colors impact our senses:

• Red - attracts attention, generates excitement and creates energy.  Physically, it stimulates the appetite and raises blood pressure.
• Orange - friendly, cheerful and happy.  Orange also creates energy, but it decreases irritability. 
• Yellow - uplifting, optimistic, warm.  Yellow paint is liquid sunshine. (I often recommend a yellow shade for a room that doesn’t get much natural light).  Yellow is actually the most difficult color for our eyes to process and see.
• Green - rejuvenating, balancing, relaxing, refreshing.  Green is the easiest color for the eye to see.  It’s no wonder that there is so much green in nature!
• Blue - soothing, calming, refreshing.  Physically, blue slows the metabolism and lowers blood pressure.  Think maybe that’s why so many of us choose to vacation near the water?
• Purple - royal, romantic, mysterious, elegant, creative.  Physically, it suppresses the appetite and eases the mind.
• Black - power, elegance, sophistication, worldly, mysterious.  Grounds other colors.
• White - cleanliness, purity, peace.  Enhances other colors.
• Gray - neutral, “the chameleon of color” when paired with colors, it takes on the shades of its pair’s complementary colors. 
• Brown - warm, natural, “the comfort color.”

Now that you know how certain colors can impact you, what to do if your favorite color does not convey the mood you wish to invoke in a certain space? For example, since orange generates energy, you probably wouldn’t want to paint your bedroom walls orange - at least not if you want to get any sleep!  And you wouldn’t want to paint your kitchen or dining room purple - unless maybe you’re using color as a weight loss strategy!  But if these are your favorite colors, and they make you feel good, no one is saying you can’t use them wherever you want.  They may just need to become a secondary color or accent in the color scheme for that particular room.

How do you decide which other colors will work the best with your chosen hue?  If you don’t feel comfortable building a color scheme using the color wheel, you can find color inspiration all around you.

The World is Full of Color Inspiration

Look to Nature

Visit your favorite place to enjoy and appreciate the Great Outdoors, and take your digital camera along to capture anything that grabs your eye as you walk.  Not only are you sure to discover beautiful, unusual and inspiring color ideas along the way, but later, your digital photos can be enlarged, framed and hung as wall art in your newly decorated space.  Take special notice of what color combinations occur in nature, and how certain colors in combination enhance the beauty and vibrancy of one another.  Consider these places and natural events for a color field trip:

• your favorite gardens
• the beach or lakeshore
• the sunset

Shop for Inspiration

Do you like to shop?  Then why not shop for color inspiration?  Retail stores buy goods based on recommendations from the color gurus who set the color trends, both in fashion and interior design.  The color trend setters have done the work for you, and the retail stores carry products in the latest tints and shades of your favorite hues.  Put these retail outlets on your must-shop-for-inspiration list:

• bed/bath outlets - check out the designer bedding
• fabric stores - look at the colors textile designers combine in their prints and stripes
• the paint or home improvement store - most of the big paint manufacturers, like Benjamin Moore, Sherwin Williams, Behr and Glidden, have preselected color schemes designed for all the rooms in your home.  Pick up their brochures filled with photos that apply the color schemes and show you which colors go on the walls, floors, furnishings and accents.  One is sure to catch your eye! 

Study Different Cultures

Are you drawn to ethnically-inspired design?  Many world cultures have a very distinctive color legacy.  Look to these cultural cues when choosing your inspired color palette:

• Mexico and Central America - think of the haciendas in bright blues, deep reds, and rich ochres.  Traditional combinations include: ruddy terracottas with dusky blues, deep yellows with earthy browns, bright greens and pinks.

• Japan and East Asia - soft, subdued, neutral palettes in browns, grays, beiges and off-whites inspired from natural elements like dark woods, bamboo, stones and pebbles.

• China - rich, vibrant color based on color symbolism.  Black represents the yin (female) and is associated with rejuvenation; red represents the yang (male) and is associated with self-expression; green symbolizes nourishment; white represents immortality; yellow is an imperial color that represents Earth.  The Qing Dynasty palette includes red, yellow, gold, turquoise, black and light green.

• Mediterranean - bright white, blues inspired by the sea: azure blue, turquoise.  Palettes vary from the muted colors of almond greens, lavender-blues and dove grays in the south of France to a warmer palette of oranges, yellows, wine reds, earth browns, blues and deep greens of Italy and Spain.

• Morocco - strong colors in the jewel tones of royal blue, vibrant purple, emerald green, turquoise, bold yellow, and crimson.  Warm spice-inspired tones are also used such as cinnamon, curry, paprika and saffron.  Moroccan schemes include neutrals in various tones of creams and whites, sands and taupes to calm the mood in private areas in the home.  Silver and gold are used in fabrics, furnishings and accents to add opulence.

Color Inspiration at Home

As a color specialist, one of the first things I do when I visit new clients is to tour their homes and look for color cues.  Most often, I find plenty of inspiration throughout the home to use as a jumping off point for a new color scheme.  Maybe it’s a specific piece of artwork (not necessarily hung in the room I’m there to address), a favorite fabric, a rug, or even a vacation photo.  Often, for whatever reason, people aren’t always cued into what colors most inspire them.  So I’m challenging you now to take a tour of your own home.  Go from room to room and try to see everything with a fresh set of eyes.  Take the time to reflect on what you see and how it makes you feel.  You may be surprised to find that the perfect color inspiration was right there before your eyes the whole time!

[tag] color inspiration, color scheme, decorating, interior design, choosing color [/tag]

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