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How to pick the perfect colour palette for your whole home

  • Tips & Tricks
Apr 08, 2022
Yellow & grey home colour combination for interiors - Beautiful Homes

One of the best ways to make your home look both welcoming and personal is to have a cohesive colour palette. And since picking an entire scheme might feel dunting, we’ve rounded up some insider secrets to help make your decisions easier

Let’s be honest, picking a single wall paint colour for just one room can often seem daunting enough. So it’s normal to feel a little nervous when choosing a palette for your whole house. Too similar and it seems matchy-matchy, too neutral and it might be boring; if the colours don’t coordinate enough, you'll end up with a confused hodge-podge.

 

So, let's break it down into simpler steps to demystify the task and show how easy your home colour selection can actually be. A quick look at some colour terms will help make it easier:

 

  • Hue, Shade, Tint and Tone:
    Hue is the pure colour, Shade is the hue + black, Tint is hue + white and Tone is hue + grey.

  • Warm Colours:
    Hues along the colour wheel ranging red through yellow (including browns, beiges, and tans) generally add warmth and comfort to a room.

  • Cool Colours:
    Hues green through purple (including most greys) add freshness and calm to a room.

  • Neutrals:
    Tones and tints of the hues mentioned within the brackets above, as well as black, white, taupe, cream, greige, etc. These are often muted shades and usually still have a warmish or coolish undertone so that their appearance can change based on ambient light and surrounding factors.

  • Undertone:
    This determines where colours fit in relation to other colours. To identify the undertone as warm or cool, you need to see if it has more in common with red or blue.

Quick Tip: Check darker shades of the same colour and see if the undertone becomes more apparent.

What is a Whole House Colour Scheme?

Let us start by defining what we mean when we talk about colour coordinating your home. Choosing a colour theme does not mean that every room of your home needs to be steeped in every shade or hue in your chosen palette or even that every room should be filled completely by any single colour. Instead, a complementary colour scheme should provide you with a range of colours that play well off each other and can be distributed throughout your house to varying degrees. The dominant wall colour in one area might be the accent colour in the next, and perhaps only be reflected in a select few décor items in a third.

Complementary color scheme for home paint - Beautiful Homes

Since interior colour choices are very subjective and personal, you don't necessarily have to depend on traditional colour combinations to create a successful style.


 

Why do you Need a Whole House Colour Palette?

When you walk through your house, you will notice that there is a distinct flow and that certain rooms can be easily viewed from spaces within other rooms. With modern open planned homes, this sight-line is often quite pronounced, which means that providing a consistent home colour scheme helps give unity and coherence to your space.

Monochromatic color scheme for house color selection - Beautiful Homes

By repeating, reflecting and playing with the same selection of colours in different ways throughout your space, you can prevent your home from being visually cluttered or discordant. This does not mean that the best colour for house interiors is always a simple neutral. On the contrary, if we consider any room in particular, then a wall colour combination for living room will have more visual harmony and definitely more personality if it plays with brighter accents or different depths of hue than rooms that are only painted in the same neutral shades.

The colour palette also helps to define the mood and energy of your space. If you have a clear idea of the atmosphere you want to convey, you can select a palette that feels right and Effortlessly communicates your personal style.

What is Step One to Choosing a Home Colour Combination?

As discussed above, the right colour palette will help to create the mood, be it bright, cosy or elegant, and give your home both aesthetic flow and a feeling of harmony. That said, picking a scheme that fits your home and lifestyle is more than just matching paint colours or fabrics. Since paint comes in such a wide range of colours and finishes, it is advisable that you start with the less flexible elements of your home interior design. Begin with the architectural elements such as floors, tiles, stone counters, etc and then factor in your larger furniture such as built-ins or personal pieces. 

Wall paint color ideas for home bar - Beautiful Homes

Be aware of the overall tone of natural light in your home throughout the day. Once these factors are clear, you can pick your wall paint colour combination to suit the characteristic conditions of your home the best.

 

Choosing the best colour for house interiors is also dependent on the usage patterns and artificial light. A room that gets very little daylight, or one that is only used before sunrise or in the evenings might need a warm colour palette to help soften shadows, and look inviting in artificial light. Note the “temperature” of your preferred bulbs (cool, bright or warm) and plan your colours to suit.

Yellow color theme for living room design - Beautiful Homes

How to choose the colour palette for your home?

When picking the best colour for home interiors, the floor plan is an essential tool to help to keep track of sight-lines, adjoining walls and open spaces. Knowing which areas have the most visual impact on each other, you can pick specific shades that work well together for these. A good rule of thumb is that adjacent rooms should have at least 2 colours in common and that connecting spaces, such as halls and landings, are uncomplicated in neutral hues. Consider how one room will flow into the next and which items within these rooms can be incorporated into the palette.

Below are some simple ways to get inspiration when choosing the best colour combinations for your home:

 

  • Art you Love:

    You probably have a particular piece of artwork, a magazine spread or even a piece of fabric that strongly appeals to you. You can choose distinct colours from within that piece to make up your palette. Pay attention to the balance of the colours within the original piece in order to recreate similar balance within your colour scheme. If the artwork is a piece you own, you might even want to make it the focus in one of your rooms. You can plan your two colour combination for living room according to the two dominant colours in that particular artwork. 

  • A Single Bold Colour:

    If there is a single bold colour you absolutely love, you can choose to use that as the key shade in your palette. Use shades and tints of the same hue for a sophisticated monochromatic colour scheme; for example shades of peach and rose gold enhance the look of wooden floors beautifully. Or use complementing neutrals and a bright contrast; a combination of rust, turquoise and beige will give your space a modern bohemian flavour.

  • Start Neutral:

    While we established that neutral is not the only way to create coherence with your home colour, it can still be a great starting point, especially in homes where the non-flexible elements are numerous. With a neutral colour starting point, you pick a warm and a cool toned hue and these then repeat as your accents within different rooms. Keep in mind that your neutral anchor should be in every room.

  • Inspired by Nature:

    One of the simplest ways to ensure a complementary colour scheme is to look outside your window! Most colours that work well together in nature will also work for the interior of your house and if you then choose to enhance the effect with house plants and greenery, you can create an elegant but understated haven. When you use the environment as your muse, you get a truly timeless colour palette.

 

And finally, remember that adding colour to a room doesn't have to mean a long-term commitment to that single chosen hue. When it comes to a living room design, there are many ways to add new colour with small touches such as changing the soft furnishings – rugs, pillows, throws, and curtains. These are also the perfect canvas for adding pattern or texture to your theme. Changing artwork, small décor pieces and accessories is another way to introduce a new hue or shade into a room. And don't forget the fresh hues of natural elements like flowers and plants.

 

Now that we’ve covered some of the steps to creating a cohesive colour theme for your home, we hope you are inspired to make it a reality! 

 

At Beautiful Homes Service by Asian Paints, what we’re best at is partnering with you to craft the home of your dreams. If you’re eager to get started on creating that perfect haven we’re here for all your home interior design, home décor & renovation needs – reach out or find one of our state-of-the-art stores near you.

 

We’re currently available in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Bengaluru, Delhi, Pune or Kolkata, with new locations coming soon!

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