Interior Design – Easy Color Schemes

Beautiful color interior schemes can be easy and inexpensive.  One of the simplest tools for creating a color scheme is the good old color wheel.  This will be your new BFF!

A good color scheme brings happiness to the interior decor.  Color gives an interior life and personality.  A bad color scheme creates discord and irritability for the inhabitants.  Color for home decor matters on levels much deeper than aesthetics so it is important to do it right.

Color is one of the easiest interior design elements to mess up.  Unfortunately it happens all too often with the “I want to use this color, this one and that one” mode of selecting colors.

• Not all colors work together.
• Not all colors are harmonious.
• “Because I like it” does not guarantee a color works with another one.

A color wheel is a fantastic way to achieve foolproof results when you aren’t sure if colors work together and as an aid in creating the basic color scheme for a room.  Then it is possible to add additional “pops of color” for added interest.  Here are some examples of basic color schemes.

Picture via book Hamptons Havens

Monochromatic:  Selecting any shade, tone or tint of one color.  Easy.  Select a range of tints, tones or shades of one color.

Easier:  Select one color and a neutral such as green and white.

Photo via Decorati – Jamie Drake

Analogous:  Selecting hues which lie adjacent on the color wheel.  This scheme creates harmony and is best limited to not more than one quarter of the wheel.

Photo via Dorothy Draper Inc.

Complimentary:  Select colors, shades, tones or tints which are directly opposite one another on the wheel.  Colors which are the exact opposite in tint, tone or shade radiate equally which creates a harmonious balance.

Two colors:  with the public areas of a home this is often works best using a hue to hue, tint to tint or shade to shade of the pure colors found on the wheel, which for some can be too bold.  But, if bold is your preference, go for it.  Pure color complimentary schemes such as blue and orange or yellow and violet can work in a playroom or child’s bedroom.

Split Complimentary –three colors:  Select one color then one on each side of its complimentary color.

Color wheels solve the age old question of does this color go with that one.  They are available at any art supply or craft store.  Just turn the wheel to see what color goes with another based on the possible scheme types listed.  Admittedly they are a little basic but one can easily expand the Color Wheel for today’s colors. Armed with a color wheel, one can also solve numerous color disagreements.  Color is a science, if you fight it, it will fight right back with an ugly upsetting room.