How to Color Coordinate Your Rooms? Here Are Some Solutions

If you want to give your home a fashionable makeover, there are several exciting ideas you can consider. But no matter what kind of work you do on the house, a coat of paint is always something that is involved in any renovation work. This is your opportunity to color coordinate your rooms and make everything look like a cohesive, well thought of whole. There are several stylish color combinations for 2020 you can give a shot, take a look at how.

Color Palette for the Whole House

When you flip through magazines, you may have seen plenty of whole house color palette examples. But how do you put that into effect in your own house? It can be difficult to get the right color palette even for a single room, so how do you color coordinate all the rooms in your house? There are several ways to narrow down to the right color palette. One of the best things to do, however, is to pick a color that will be the central color, then build the palette around that color. The following are some of the ways in which you can color coordinate your rooms.

Pick the Central Room and Start There

Pick a color for the room at the center of you design and then work your way outwards.

Living Room Color Schemes

When you are thinking of the central room, living room color schemes are the first to come to mind. The living room usually becomes the largest part of your home or at least a central part of your home where you entertain guests. Even if the room is not physically located in the center of your home, the room can become the nucleus around which the rest of the house is decorated. If you pick the living room to be the central room, start by picking out a color and theme for this room.

The living room is the space in your home that is likely to be occupied the most. This is the place you may want to read your morning paper in and is also likely the room where you entertain the guests. Most frequently, this is the room that one sees first when they enter the house. But even if it is not the first room, it is the room that people are led to for entertaining guests. There are several color schemes you can try in your living, or in any room in your house for that matter if you know how to match colors together.

Some of the tried and tested colors you can try in your living room are green, blue, gray, beige, and of course, white. These are classic, solid colors that go with a variety of other colors as well. Green and blue may sound like extremely dark colors to use in the living room. However, if these colors are used alongside complementary colors and furniture, in addition to plenty of light (natural and artificial), the room does not have to look dingy.

Green will go very well in a room that has plenty of natural light. It is the color that imitates natural elements and will make the room feel more relaxing and inviting. It is not possible for everyone to have indoor plants and take meticulous care of them. Green walls are a good way to make up for the lack of natural elements in your living room!

Similarly, blue is one of the most soothing colors and is perfect for a living room. Blue is also a great color to pair with other neutral colors and you can choose from a variety of shades. If you have wooden flooring, blue walls are an especially good match.

Dining Room Color Schemes

Alternatively, the dining room may be the central room in the house. The same advice applies here, though the dining room may be decorated slightly differently than the living room.

The dining room is another communal place where the family comes together for a meal. This will also be the space where you will entertain guests you have over for a meal. It is a space that should invoke camaraderie and a feeling of being home. You want your dining room to look sophisticated, yet not so formal that it starts to look cold. Your guests, or for that matter, even your children should not feel mortified of spilling something in the dining room. Of course, this does not mean your dining room should be messy. But it simply means that when food is being handled, some messes are bound to happen and the space should be inviting enough that it feels like home, where you can mess things up a touch.

The dining room is an area where you can really experiment and have fun with colors. This does not mean you have to select loud colors or prints, you can play around even with neutral tones. The point is to make the dining room fun and exciting for entertaining guests. If you are calling somebody home, it is very rare that the occasion will be a highly formal, diplomatic event (unless you are the President, and live in the White House). Therefore, you do have the liberty of making the space fun and informal. Starting at the dining room to create the color palette of your home will also set the tone for the rest of the house.

Match Connecting Rooms

You will often find different rooms in the house connected to each other in a way that they can be visible from the other room. For example, sitting at your dining table you may be able to look into the kitchen or into your living room. If your dining room is attached to the living room or the kitchen, you can pick out a wallpaper that goes with the color scheme of the other room. For example, if your living room is blue, you can pick out a blue floral wallpaper. The idea is to allow color choices to flow between rooms. This applies not only to the dining room but to all the rooms in your house.

Kitchen Color Schemes

Often, the kitchen and the dining space are attached or the latter extends into the kitchen. In that case, it is important to stick to the same color scheme. If you have blue wallpaper in the dining area, either keep the kitchen walls white or paint them blue as well, either the same shade or complementary shade. Depending on how often you cook or what kind of food you cook, you may want to keep the wall closest to the stove a darker color to avoid getting food stains and grease on the walls.

Alternatively, you can also consider colorful kitchen tiles for the walls and create a charming mural. This is an especially fun way to experiment with colors and patterns, and tiles will also be easier to clean because of their smooth finish. There is no paucity of color combinations you can try, but if the pattern of your tiles is heavy, you may want to maintain a solid color theme for the rest of the kitchen. Pick a tile pattern that also matches any adjoining room as has been described above.

A home with a kitchen is a complete home. No matter how large or small your kitchen is, there are ways to make it the warm, inviting haven it should be. The colors in your kitchen can come from several elements. If you have an island in your kitchen, you can add a white marble top or a green granite top. The element of color can also come from the kitchen closets, and of course, from the walls. Even if the kitchen has natural light, you will need to add extra light, especially above the stove so you can see what you are cooking!

Private Areas

Your bedroom is a test of how to coordinate colors in a home. If the living room needs to be a comfortable and inviting haven for guests, the bedroom is the intimate space you can call your own. The bedroom is also unlikely to be adjoining any other room, so you can go a different route for the color than the rest of the house. But it is best to remain in the same ballpark at least.

In the bedroom, you want the color scheme to be soothing and gentle, conducive for you to drift off to sleep, or take some time out for yourself. Your bedroom is an oasis in the dry desert of a difficult work week. You may want to experiment with soothing pastel colors and add a splash of bright colors here and there. Perhaps, paint one wall a brighter color or experiment with colors when you are furnishing the room. However, for the bedroom, it is best to keep things serene and soothing. Clashing prints and colors may seem exciting at first but can be overstimulating over time.

Bedroom Color Schemes

Some of the popular colors you can consider for your bedroom are lavender, blue, green, grey, and, of course, white. For starters, lavender will give your bedroom an elegant and royal feeling, but it will not overpower the room. It is a soothing and subtle color that will only highlight the other elements of the room rather than take away from them. Lavender walls are great with natural light and some indoor plants. You can also pick out darker stained wood furniture as a contrast with the soothing lavender.

Even when it comes to shades of green and blue, you can create a soothing haven using different shades of these colors. A pale green goes very well in the bedroom, especially when used well with the right kind of light. Play with natural light if you can, or light up a wall that sports a delicate shade of green or blue. Again, these are colors that go very well with natural light and other natural elements in the room. Don’t shy away from keeping indoor plants in your bedroom.

White is also a neutral color that goes well with pretty much anything! It is important to keep some symmetry in the room, even when you are experimenting with colors. You may want to keep one color as the standard note and then add other, complementary colors to the mix. So, for example, if your wall is a shade of powder blue, use accents of blue for other places in your room too, such as in a rug or for the upholstery in the room. Stay within the loose structure of the mood board of your color, and experiment keeping that in mind.

Wallpapers and Patterns

One of the best ways of having fun with your color scheme is to play with patterns using wallpapers. The pattern on the wallpaper can be the highlight of the room, while the furniture and other elements of the room can have a darker or contrasting color to ground the room. This is something that can work in any room of the house and the pattern of the wallpaper can also be used in other parts of the house such as in upholstery or curtains to string the house together as a cohesive whole.

However, even the wallpaper is grounded in the primary color you have chosen for your palette so you can only pick a pattern after that has been decided. But repeating the motif of the wallpaper in different parts of the house is a great way to color coordinate all your rooms.

Build a Palette of Five Colors, Not More

While building a color palette for your home, it is important to show some restraint. A palette is meant to have colors that complement each other. But even the most complimentary colors can clash if there are too many on the same palette. Therefore, it is advisable to have a color palette of not more than five colors. Of these five colors, pick a primary color that will likely be the color of your central room. Around that primary color, add more complementary colors.

One of the best ways to build a palette is to find ways to use the same color in different shades and hues. For example, you can paint your kitchen cabinets a darker shade of the color of the walls in your dining room. This does not mean everything in your home needs to match. You just need to find the right ways to shake things up and introduce variety.

Another great tip for building a color palette is to visualize a scene in nature. Take, for instance, a beach. There are shades of blue, white, sometimes a light pink or orange, etc. If these colors complement each other in nature, they are also likely to complement each other as paint colors. This doesn’t mean all five colors must be from such a natural setting, but this is a good way of ascertaining if a certain shade of blue will go with a certain shade of pink or orange.

Undertones and Fixed Elements

When you are building a color palette, it is important to make note of the fixed elements in your house. This refers to closets and cabinets that are built into the wall, kitchen tops, flooring, etc. Your color palette also involves ensuring all these fixed elements are in sync with each other and with the rest of their surroundings. The fixed elements will generally be of neutral colors. But even in those neutral colors, you will be able to identify an undertone. The undertone for an oak wood cabinet will be warm, so you should pick warm colors for the wall accordingly, or alternatively, you can also pick out a contrasting color.

Similarly, pinewood is likely to have a cooler undertone, so you should pick colors around it accordingly. The fixed elements will ground the room and they are also the parts of the room you cannot change. It, therefore, makes sense to decorate the room around this fixed element instead of the other way round.

Default Neutral

In your color palette, you need a color that will come to your rescue when all else fails. This is the default neutral that can be used wherever you cannot make up your mind about what to use. The default neutral is the best option to use in open areas and can also be employed generously in connecting spaces so that there is a sense of cohesion. The default neutral also does not have to wash out the whole room. You can keep the default neutral as the main color in a room if you cannot pick out of the more flamboyant colors. But the accents in that room can be with the bolder colors.

So, for instance, if you are going for a warm color palette and your default neutral color is beige, you can use shades of orange or maroon for the curtains, rugs, a single armchair, etc. The default neutral colors will be able to string the whole house together and allow you to work more comfortably within the same theme.

But, What about the Basement?

Basement color schemes can be difficult to get right. The basement is one of the most neglected parts of the house when it comes to decoration and furnishing. It is not something that people see when they come to your home, but a basement has a lot of potential. It can be a den that you use to relax in and play video games with your friends, or even a workspace you have created within your own home.

The good thing about the basement is that it will be a separate area altogether, so you can step out of your color palette more freely than you can with the rest of the house. If you had trouble picking between two themes, you can work with both on different levels of the house. However, there are some things to remember while furnishing and designing a basement. They are windowless rooms, by virtue of being below the ground. Of course, you can build a skylight for your basement or make space for a window near the ceiling. But usually, one cannot rely on natural light for the basement. This means that the room can seem a bit dingy, even if you have added lights to keep the room bright. The right kind of color can make the room seem more spacious and bright.

Some good colors you can use for the basement are pastel shades like light pink, powder blue (Manitou Blue), light olive green (Behr Moss Mist), yellow (Benjamin Moore Morning Sunshine), etc. If your basement is especially lacking in natural light, a warm shade of yellow for the walls is a good way to make up for it. The light shades of green and blue will also give the room more space and make it look more open.

It is important to keep the basement well lit so do not shy away from adding more light fittings than you would otherwise. A dim lamp will not make a difference – invest in LED ceiling lights for the best, and brightest results.

Parting Words

From the tips and solutions described above, it may have become clear that a lot of planning and work goes into choosing the right color palette for your home and coordinating your rooms. A few different factors need to be taken into consideration before you finally decide on a palette. What is the undertone of your fixed items? Do you want to go with a bold color or stick to pastel colors? How much do you want to experiment with patterns? These are all only some of the questions you will have to find answers to while color coordinating your rooms.

But fret not, because there are ways of ensuring you are going in the right direction. Work with swatches, make a swatch patch of your own and see how everything looks on paper by making a floor plan of your house. This exercise can be challenging but also very rewarding when the result is a beautifully decorated home.