Reality Reno with mitch and mark – Colouring Inside and Outside The Lines…

When it comes to colour, the majority of us are way braver with our clothing than we are with our home décor.  In reality, there is no reason to be shy with your home if you’re prepared to extend yourself when it comes to your fashion choices.  If you’re a lover of colour, be it bold or subtle, we say celebrate it with passion in your home.

Just like putting an outfit together, the colours in your home décor need to have a connection with an overall story.  By no means does everything need to feel matchy, matchy, but more so connecting links to bring it together with purpose.  

We’ve mentioned previously the benefit of going subtle with your major furnishing pieces, the expensive ones.  A neutral base with your sofa, chairs and other solid furniture provides the opportunity to change things up with decor pieces from the seasons or even with an irresistible new trend.  Just make sure you think through your neutral base colour for the major furnishings so it can withstand trends and be adaptable with a broad range of colour schemes that will come and go. But if you have your heart set on a bright orange couch, go for it, just remember you will likely need to live with it for a long time.

There are a few key factors to consider with the colours you bring into your home.  The number one consideration should be – will the colours make you happy.  Too many designers/stylists tell people what they should be doing without considering what works for the client.  It is your home, so the colour palette needs to be your inspiration. 

Where to start? For a colour theme think of the hero piece in your room, which may be a rug or even a piece of artwork. The rug or the artwork should provide the colours to tie in or at least be complementary to the overall colour scheme.  If either of these items don’t have links to your colour scheme, they will be left hanging and potentially throw out the colour balance of the space. 

Likewise, your environment can play a big part with your interior colour scheme.  If you are lucky enough to have a view of the ocean, bushland, rolling hills or even a city scape, there is generally something that drew you to live in this environment so these colours should be on your consideration list.

The easiest way to explain how we bring colours together is through an example which hopefully helps this make sense, without the benefit of us having you in our homewares store to demonstrate.  

Let’s set the scene and in this case we’ll say we are working with a living room with timber floors, a natural beigne coloured couch with similar armchairs and a timber coffee table and side tables…a very neutral base palate.  With this base the colour scheme options are endless and up to you.  Whether you are adding a combination of green, orange and yellow, or pink blue and red, or anything for that matter, a few simple steps will get you where you need to be.  

The principles we live by with any colour scheme are always the same.  It’s about colour repetition, which can as bold or subtle as you like, but has to be enough to tie the elements together.  If there are two, three or more feature colours that could come from an artwork, rug or even that view, you need to draw them out and use them in the room at least three times individually and even add them combined if you find an option.  

Going back to our neutral room, let’s say we’re working with an amazing artwork that we simply must have in the space, and the feature colours of the artwork are pastel pink, sage green and rust.  To bring the artwork and the room together with that ‘meant to be feeling’ we need to tie these colours in. 

To marry the three colours to the space we can add a wide range of pieces to do the job.  The options are obvious, but let’s list them anyway.  The easy ones are the cushions and throws and even the lamp shades which link the colours.  Other options may be ornaments, ottomans, vases and even floral arrangements, again all reflecting the key colours of the room.  

Remember when you’re tying in these three colours we introduced, link the original sofa or armchairs, through your décor items otherwise they will end up becoming the odd piece in the room. We need to bring them along on the journey too.

Be brave with mixing the fabrics and textures you’re adding but be a little careful with patterned fabrics. Mixed patterns can be a lot of fun bringing colours together, like selecting a single floral combined with a check or stripe. It can really add a wow when combined with you block colours, however too many florals or patterns will ‘fight’ with each other and create confusion.

Have fun and don’t be afraid to colour outside the lines.