Choosing a Color Palette- My Favorite Interior Design Hack
I struggle with interior design— especially when it comes to color.
I love to pour over beautiful pictures of richly hued interiors, but when it comes to choosing a color palette in my own home, I gravitate towards a clean slate.
I love a simple white wall. When I move into a new space, I leave a room empty for a good long while, and hold all introduction of color at an arm’s length. To me, color is powerful and one must know how to use it correctly.
My brain also struggles with order and decision making. So although clean, simple and colorless may be my preference, this choice may be tinged with an inability to…choose. Despite taking painting classes through childhood and college, I don’t have a natural eye for color pairing. I end up getting carried away by too many ideas but not able to select one of them.
But I’ve come up with one trick for myself that helps. It has proved to be invaluable when the time comes to make the move with color, and has helped me multiple times find a cohesive color palette for a room’s interior.
I find a single piece of art to center the room’s color palette and inspire the choices behind its decoration.
Very simple, but extremely helpful. A painting has the most variety to play with, but any type of ceramic or other media of art piece could do the trick. What initially draws me to said work of art is the main color I’m wanting to use in the room. But when I bring it into my home I find myself studying it more. What it is exactly that I like about it? Is it the high contrast of colors? The tonality? One color emphasized in particular or the balance of many at once?
Using a work of art as a cornerstone for the color palette of a room has helped me find a wall color.
In the event that I decide to deviate from my go to white walls, I may vaguely know which color I want, but be completely lost as to what shade or hue. The one thousand color chips at the store are also daunting (unless you opt for Farrow & Ball, in which case the smaller curated selection of colors alone is worth the price).
In our master bathroom, I had some help deciding generally what color to look for (a dusty pink), but I used the artwork that I had chosen for the room as a reference point. I chose a color that married the sort of mauve shades in this framed postcard with the warmer more reddish tones.
The color used here is Benjamin Moore Monticello Rose. For the full makeover of our master bathroom, click here.
Using an art piece to frame a room creates a bit of depth to the color scheme used in a room.
In my yellow kitchen, I knew I wanted to use blue as an accent color in decor. Which is why I picked up this still life a couple of years ago.
Thrifted wood framed still life, artist unknown.
The more I’ve looked at it, I notice grey background tinted with green tones. I see the grey contrasted against a very bright cheerful yellow. I also love the very warm amber shade of the smaller bottle. I’ve collected similar hued pieces that reiterate not just the blue and yellow, but those same grey and reddish tones, which make for a much more sophisticated color scheme than simply “blue and yellow”.
And if you have no idea what you’re room is going to look like, it can be a good start.
Our living room is very much a work in progress, but I’ve used the same principle to guide my vision of it (as it comes together slowly). This ceramic bowl was a wedding gift from my husband while we honeymooned in Madeira, Portugal. Orange is my favorite color, so I knew when we had a house I’d use this bowl to center our main living area, and find a way to weave the playful color into the color scheme of the room.
Ceramic bowl hand made in Madeira by Lillie Ceramics.
We do have white walls in our living area, so are weaving color into its design mainly through art and decoration. While any major furniture purchases are a ways out, we’re in process of building a gallery wall along the room’s main wall space. Note the blues and oranges reiterated through the art.
All thrifted pieces. A framed Gaugin print, a ship painting I found while sifting through trash at the Goodwill outlet (my favorite—the colors are fantastic), a vintage lion lithograph, and a framed still life (which will be switched out for a larger piece at some point).
Whether it dictates the color of the walls, helps to pull together cohesive colors in furniture, rug, artwork etc., or gives life to a blank slate, using art in interior design can help to form a central building block. My favorite way to find art is to thrift for it, but art books and Pinterest have also been solid sources of inspiration for me. It’s always a little bit of a mystery when I will find something that catches my eye, but that is part of the fun.
