A Guide to Using Colour in Your Home
Change the mood of a room with colours that advance or recede
Knowing the difference between a warm colour and a cool colour can help you choose colour combinations more confidently. When you understand how the temperature of a colour affects how it’s perceived, you can use that knowledge to design colour schemes that work for you.
I talked before about how to use the colour wheel to devise some basic colour schemes. It also can help you determine the temperature of a colour.
The basic colour wheel is split into two halves, a warm half and a cool half. The warm half runs from red through yellow-green. The cool half runs from green through red-violet. Our eyes and brains perceive different wavelengths of light as colours. The importance in interior design is that warm colours tend to advance and cool colours tend to recede.
The basic colour wheel is split into two halves, a warm half and a cool half. The warm half runs from red through yellow-green. The cool half runs from green through red-violet. Our eyes and brains perceive different wavelengths of light as colours. The importance in interior design is that warm colours tend to advance and cool colours tend to recede.
Since warm colours tend to advance, this means that they tend to draw in a space. This red living room feels more intimate because it’s red. If the designer wanted to make the room feel more open and expansive, she would have chosen a cooler colour.
Learn how to work with red walls
Learn how to work with red walls
If you have a large, sparsely furnished room and your goal is to close it in and make it feel more intimate, a warm colour like this yellow can do that for you.
This tendency of warm colours to advance can be seen at work in this yellow-green accent wall. That accent wall is pulling the stairs closer to the dining table. Of course, it’s not actually moving anything, but the perception is that the space feels closer.
If you’re deciding on a paint scheme and there are elements in a room that you want to draw closer, point them in a warmer colour.
Find out the secret to a long-lasting paint job
If you’re deciding on a paint scheme and there are elements in a room that you want to draw closer, point them in a warmer colour.
Find out the secret to a long-lasting paint job
Green is the first cool colour of the colour wheel. In green, the tendency for colours to advance stops and they begin to recede. By recede I mean that cool colours expand a room or a space.
This bathroom feels more expansive with a green wall than it would with an equally saturated red.
This bathroom feels more expansive with a green wall than it would with an equally saturated red.
A blue wall tends to make a room feel larger. This is important to know if you have a small room that you want to expand rather than make more intimate and close.
Check out ways to cool down your home this summer with blue
Check out ways to cool down your home this summer with blue
You can mix and match warm and cool colours with purpose and meaning to advance your design goals and make a room more interesting. The blue walls and draperies in this living room are expanding away from the viewer and the yellow accents are advancing toward the viewer.
The warm colours in the painting on the mantle in this purple room is the clear focal point. By choosing the cool colours of the walls and furnishings, the designer is adding emphasis to the painting and she’s using her knowledge of colour theory to advance her goal.
The effect is subtle but impossible to miss.
The effect is subtle but impossible to miss.
The closer to red cool colours get on the wheel, the warmer they become. The last stop on the cool side of the wheel is violet-red. After violet-red, colours start to advance again.
Colour theory provides a general framework to describe the behaviours of colours, and exceptions to these generalisations abound. Still, the tendencies of warm colours to advance and cool colours to recede are almost always true.
If you have a room with a low ceiling and you want the room to feel taller, paint the ceiling a white that’s been tinted with blue. Similarly, if you have a very wide room that you want to feel closer and more intimate, then paint the room in a warm colour and it will do just that.
Read more:
Colour Me Bold: 11 Ways to Energise Your Home
Tell us:
How do you use warm and cool colours in your own home? Tell us in the Comments below.
Colour theory provides a general framework to describe the behaviours of colours, and exceptions to these generalisations abound. Still, the tendencies of warm colours to advance and cool colours to recede are almost always true.
If you have a room with a low ceiling and you want the room to feel taller, paint the ceiling a white that’s been tinted with blue. Similarly, if you have a very wide room that you want to feel closer and more intimate, then paint the room in a warm colour and it will do just that.
Read more:
Colour Me Bold: 11 Ways to Energise Your Home
Tell us:
How do you use warm and cool colours in your own home? Tell us in the Comments below.
The answer to those questions is in the colour wheel.