A simple color scheme isn’t difficult to achieve when you stop trying to work on every color at once. A room doesn’t require a complicated color scheme in order to feel styled. It requires only a clear direction that links the big elements with smaller pieces: the wall or floor colour, with the large sofa, with a rug or throw, with a cushion or print. Before looking at colour swatches or trying to decide whether to buy new cushions, pick one room and begin to understand what the colours are that are already in it.
Look first at the fixed elements: the floor and wall colour, built-in shelving, tiles, a fitted wardrobe, large pieces of furniture. These colours aren’t exciting, but they matter because they are the colours you are working around. A beige sofa or warm timber floor or grey rug or white wall isn’t something you have to try to work around or hide. Rather, it may form the base of a calm palette. You don’t have to cover every colour. What you want is to connect all of those parts.
A helpful starting point is to take a photo of the room in natural daylight and to work out what three colours you can pull from it. These three colours could be, for example: a base colour (something quiet), a main colour (something that supports it) and an accent colour (something small). For a bedroom, they may be warm white walls, pale wood furniture, and a dusty green on the bed or art. For a living room, they could be a grey sofa, a black metal floor lamp, and a terracotta cushion. Keep the number of colours low so the room doesn’t quickly start to feel busy.
A challenge for new colour decorators is often working in accent colours. Each colour in an item looks great, by itself, but the result can end up being too busy. A blue pot is pretty on its own, a yellow cushion is nice by itself, but the combination of a blue pot, a red art print, a green blanket, and a yellow cushion can end up in the room feeling like it’s all over the place. Accent colours work best when they serve a purpose. If you want to bring in a muted blue, let that colour come through twice or three times, as a small detail, for instance, as a cushion, as a print, as a pot. If the colour comes through twice or three times in the room, the eye knows that it is meant to be there.
Texture matters for colour too. A cream linen curtain, a wicker basket, a wool blanket, and a white ceramic pot can sit within a similar colour space but feel very different. This is helpful if you want a colour palette to stay simple and relaxed, but to avoid it looking too flat. A new colour isn’t always required for variety and contrast. Sometimes, you might simply use textiles, furniture, books, trays, small pots, and similar accessories. The room feels more dynamic when there is a more neutral colour palette, but there is still some variety in the textures.
Lighting can have a bigger effect on colour than you think. You may think you’ve found a beautiful mix of cushions for the sofa, but they feel dull and drab in the evening, under the harsh ceiling light that’s currently illuminating the room. Before deciding a colour isn’t working, check it at night, when the room is lit as it would normally be. You may be better off swapping out some cool lighting for warmer lamps; a table lamp or a floor lamp with a warm shade, for instance, will soften colour palettes and make the fabric of cushions and throws look better. A colour palette that feels too cold isn’t always the fault of the wall colour or the sofa; it’s the lighting.
When you’re working with colour and you aren’t sure which direction you’d like to go, instead of introducing a new colour, try removing an existing one. Remove the item that feels loudest in the room, and take a photo again to see what the effect is. It’s not so much looking for the ideal, magazine-ready palette; rather, it’s finding a better harmony between your key pieces of furniture. Good colour direction is more about helping you make choices. It’s helping you identify which cushions, curtains, artwork, accessories, throws and other items are serving the room, and which aren’t.