Choosing a palette is one of the first and most important aspects of creating a cohesive interior design. It's also one of the hardest. It can be incredibly intimidating to step outside the muted comfort zone many men tend to gravitate toward: black, brown, gray, white.
Overwhelmingly, I see rooms filled with shades of gray/black or brown and white or beige. The suggestion of adding even a conservative color like navy is often met with uncomfortable resistance, with the resident of the home sometimes unable to articulate why, exactly. A lot of color seems to be equated with flamboyance and thus to be avoided.
The consequences of that, of course, are rooms that lack balance-- they're boring, dull, uncomfortable, and lacking in the energy or coziness that so many men crave for their homes. They want spaces that feel welcoming, calming, and uplifting, and don't realize how integral color is to achieving that.
Wikipedia's article on color theory is far more comprehensive and technical than I'm capable of producing. It's an interesting read, but more in-depth than we need for this purpose. Here are some things that are helpful to us:
color temperature, or whether a color is warm or cool. Yellow, orange, and red are warm colors; purple, blue, and green are cool colors. Yellow and orange are always warm. Red, blue, green, and purple can be warm or cool. Warm colors are energizing and cheerful, but can feel harsh. Cool colors are soothing and calming, but can feel chilly.
complementary colors, or colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel. They make each other more vivid: for example, green makes red redder, and red makes green greener. They can be used very effectively together, but it has to be done with care. Please see this post for more about how to use them with each other.
muted colors, or how grayed or browned down a color is vs. how bright/unmuted it is. Sage is a grayed-down green, whereas olive is a browned-down green. Mustard is a browned-down yellow. Terra cotta is a browned-down orange. Brick is a browned-down red. Mauve is a grayed-down purple. Steel blue is a grayed-down blue. Muted colors are a good compromise for people who want color but not too much of it.
bright or vivid colors, or colors that have not been muted in any way and are at full saturation. They are exciting and uplifting but can be jarring in too-large quantity.
neutral colors, or colors that are all muted-ness and no vividness. White, black, brown, and all shades in between them are considered neutrals. They provide a sturdy base to build a palette on, but too much of them results in a bland, even depressing room.
Palettes are most successful, IMO, when they have a balanced proportion of everything. It's mostly a matter of common sense: the biggest parts of the room (walls, floor, large furniture) should be easier on the eye, with brighter colors used on smaller items (smaller furniture, textiles, accessories).
Pro Tip: always include at least a little black in a room, to add crispness and ground the space. This is especially important if the room is very pale in general.
This isn't to say you can't use a vivid color on a sofa, for example; you absolutely can and should. You just have to balance it with less-vivid colors in the rest of the room. If you have a red sofa, maybe put camel throw pillows and an ivory throw blanket on it, rather than a lemon yellow pillow and tangerine blanket.
A good rule of thumb, in developing a palette, is to pick one of each of the following:
a dark neutral
a light neutral
a primary or secondary color (bright or muted) of middling shade-- not dark, not light, but in-between
a darker version of that color
a bright color with strong contrast to the prior two
a paler version of that bright color
Example:
brown
ivory
sage green
olive green
cobalt blue
ice blue
How I'd use them in a room: brown wood floor, ivory curtains, olive green chairs, sage green walls, cobalt accessories, ice blue sofa. I'd use an area rug, throw pillows, and art with combinations of the colors to tie them all together.
You can make a palette out of any combination of colors as long as you tie them together in several pieces.
If I wanted the room to have a more traditional feel, I'd use warm metals like gold-tone and brass; if I wanted it to feel more modern, however, I'd use cool metals like nickel and chrome.
(Selection of metals for a palette is another issue I'll addressed in a future post.)
Resource
Design Seeds is a wonderful site to peruse for inspiration. It takes scenes of nature and builds palettes from the colors featured in the photos. You can take a leisurely stroll through the various categories, or you can go directly to choosing a particular color and scrolling through all the palettes that contain it. You'll be surprised at how colors that wouldn't seem to go together form very beautiful palettes.
Conclusion
There are no rules to palettes. If you like a combination, you like it. But the more imbalanced a palette-- if it's mostly brights or neutrals or pastels or darks instead of featuring a roughly equal proportion of each-- the more skill it takes to do a good job of it, instead of just looking like a disorganized mess.
I suggest, if you're a beginner at interior design, you stick with a palette such as I described above. After a while, when you're more comfortable with principles of color theory and how to balance issues besides color (texture, material, height, weight, sheen, translucence, etc.) you can venture into more extreme combinations.
Comments