What Are The Mood Boosting And Mood Busting Colors For Your Home?
Color Wheel
There are some people who really don’t pay attention to their environment. Why would they? What does what the house or the office looks like have to do with anything? Choosing curtains, paint colors and furniture isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, admittedly, but some people would barely notice if the whole house were painted blue over night. Personally, I’m glad to be sitting in the other camp, where a room can feel right (or strangely awkward) and details do indeed make all the difference.
Of course, interior design works on many levels – the functional, the aesthetic and the psychological. Our surroundings affect us. What impact does color, in particular, have on our moods and our well being?
Hospitals, schools and business corporations use color and design to help with the recovery of their patients (blue reduces blood pressure), to improve the learning potential of their students (green calms the mind) and to increase the productivity of their employees (harsh lighting & bright colors will keep them out of the canteen). So why do we not apply this thinking to our homes? Don’t we want our home to truly make us more relaxed, or livelier or possibly even healthier?
Do certain colors suit certain personalities? Is it true for example that one personality type will have a yearning for yellow and another a deep love of lilac? Research to date does not indicate this to be the case. It seems we are far more fickle than that. On the whole, most of us have a color we truly despise (orange and purple rank highly on this score) but otherwise we merely dabble with a favorite color for a while, safe in the knowledge that we can drop it like a hot potato if it becomes tragically unfashionable.
Colors (certainly a splash of paint, anyway) are very easy to play with, to dabble with. So why is it that we are afraid of them? Where is our inner child when we need them most? Why do we resolve to live in safe beige and cream houses when in other countries there is such an abundance of color? Is it really to do with sunshine? Really? Can only the Caribbean and the subcontinent enjoy wild vibrant color? Have we talked ourselves into believing that we have to mirror what is happening with the weather? Because that has not always been the case.
History shows us how our ancestors were a lot braver with their choice of colors. In the 1950s, incredibly vibrant yellow alongside contrasting black, sage like green, muted terracotta and pale primrose yellow looked fabulous. In the 1920s the Art Deco movement found inspiration in primitive art and the resulting choice of colors – orange tinged pinks and grey greens – were spell binding. Earlier still, in the twentieth century, interiors were filled with the boldest colors – signal red and brilliant green – and these became wonderful backdrops to art collections that can still be seen in many English heritage houses. But would you dare?
Many mistakenly believe that period colors were all sludgy and dirty, as if someone had taken a coal-covered cloth to the paintwork, but this is far from true. Period colors include peppermint greens, ultramarine blues, ochre, sienna, peach blossom and salmon. Would we be bold enough to put any of these on the walls or would we take refuge behind an experimentally colorful but equally easily removable scatter cushion?
An individual’s love of color is, in fact, a matter of history – our own history- and looking back can help to find a color that suits us. If you think back to your childhood – an unforgettable orange carpet, your grandparents’ wallpaper or the color of a bedspread in a holiday home – these lingering memories will be influencing your choices today. So how do you go about finding the right colors for you now? Because it’s not a science, it’s definitely an art.
Start with outrageous wallpapers first, just to warm the eyes up a little – give them an opportunity to work out what they are looking at. Choosing between a selection of whites will never give you the impetus to make a decision based on whether you love a color – it will only ever be a ‘that’ll do’ decision.
So start with the bold, determine what your wild side loves and equally as importantly what you hate. And as you take this time, flicking through the samples, a certain type of pattern starts to jump out at you, a color suddenly appeals more than another and before you know it, as if by magic, you have found the right hue for you. Order a sample of it and live with it a little. Sneak up on it and check that you still love it. If you do, you have the basis for the room.
And next comes the tricky bit – the color palette. Colors rarely work by themselves, they need to be cajoled a little so that they can be seen in their right light. They need to contrast well and complement well. Think about them in the same way that you cook – you add a few extra herbs here or a lump of butter there – or the way that you play tennis – you stretch a bit further here or play an unexpected shot there. Color is something to enjoy and because it’s as subjective a subject as you can get, you have license to go wild. And ultimately if the neighbors and the in-laws raise an eyebrow then just call the scheme eclectic. Thank goodness for eclectic.
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