How to plan a whole home colour scheme.
When we redecorate or design a room we often do it in isolation from the rest of the house. It’s easy to get obsessed with finding the perfect new sofa, rug or wallpaper without much thought to how it relates to the rest of the house. But decorating a single room is like buying a dress without considering your shape or skin tone. Your newly decorated living room may look amazing, but if it jars with the colour in the colour in the hallway it may be a fail.
Like the time I got carried away shopping in Rome. I bought a Maxmara dress that I absolutely fell in love with. I tried it on and remember the look of horror on the sales assistant’s face when she realised I was actually going to buy it. She gently tried to tell me it wasn’t quite right. But I convinced myself it was just the lighting in the shop. Surely it would look fine with a bit more make-up on? It didn’t. She was right and I was the idiot who wasted 300 euros. I never was able to go out in public in that dress. But I did admire it every now and then in the back of my wardrobe. And it hung there as a stark, 300 euro warning, to never, ever buy yellow again.
But you can’t do that with your living room, you can’t just hide it away if you get it wrong. So, it’s really important to consider your whole home when choosing paint colours.
WHY PLAN A WHOLE HOME COLOUR SCHEME?
If you sit in any room of your home and look around you, you can almost certainly see out into your hallway or landing. You can probably see the colour of the walls and skirting, the colour of the carpet and maybe the bannisters too. And maybe you can see across into another room and catch a glimpse of the wall colour and furnishings in there. So you want all those colours to work together in harmony with one another.
The easiest way to do this is to plan your colour scheme right from the start. I know that’s easier said than done. Most of us haven’t just moved into our homes with a massive budget to redecorate. So if you’ve already done some rooms then you can still get on board with the whole home colour scheme. And if you think you have messed up with a couple of rooms don’t worry. Changing the paint colour is actually one of the easiest and cheapest mistakes to fix so don’t stress.
Grab yourself some paint colour charts, a cup of tea or wine, and let’s get going.
How to plan a whole home colour scheme
1. CONSIDER YOUR FITTINGS
Even if you haven’t lifted a paintbrush or bought any furniture yet there will be fixtures and fittings in your home. These are really important as they are the beginnings of your colour palette. I’m talking about bathroom tiles, kitchen cupboards, worktops, tiles in a fire hearth, the finish of light fittings, carpets or wood flooring. And if you already have them, sofa fabrics, curtains and rugs etc. All these items have to be considered so gather as many physical samples of them together as you can. If you don’t have any samples handy then take photos or cut and paste the images from retailer websites. Start creating a digital mood board of all these kinds of items.
2. CHOOSE A HALLWAY COLOUR
The hallway isn’t always the first place we get excited about decorating. They can often be a little bit neglected and overlooked as they are not areas we linger and actually live in. For most of us, they are just a means of getting in and out of the house in the morning. But starting with the hallway colour can actually save you a lot of time and hassle. It is literally the spine of your home that runs up onto the landing and leads to all the areas of the house.
Choosing your hallway colours first means you then have a starting point for all the other colours in your home. If you leave it until the end then you suddenly have to find one colour that connects with all the other colours in the home. And if you haven’t planned ahead this can be challenging. So my best advice would be to start here.
3. COMPLEMENT AND CONTRAST
Once you have your hallway colour nailed you can then you can start working on all the other rooms. Each and every other wall colour you choose should either complement or contrast with your chosen hallway shade. They should also complement or contrast with your fixtures and finishings that feature in that particular room. So this is where your moodboard from step 1 comes in. It’s good to trust your gut with what colours work together but if you want to get technical then just Google a colour wheel. Complementary colours sit on either side of the colour you are working with. Contrasting colours will sit opposite the colour you are working with.
4. LIMIT TO 5 OR 6 COLOURS
Don’t go mad thinking you need to choose a different colour for every room. If you do this it will actually make your home feel a bit chaotic. It’s good to repeat the use of colours throughout the home in different areas. For example, if you have a child’s bedroom upstairs and also a playroom downstairs then consider using the same colour to create a connection between the function of these two rooms. Or use the same colour in a bathroom as well as a utility room. An average size home will only need 5 or 6 colours tops.
5. THINK OF BALANCE
As well as the colours think of how those colours are distributed throughout the home. You don’t want all your neutral colours on one side of the house and all the bolder colours on the other side as it will make it feel unbalanced. Think about how you move throughout the house. It’s really effective to move from a neutral colour to a bright colour to a muted colour again as you work through the house. This way, as well as the colours all working together, you will be creating visual balance with your wall colours.
6. ADD THE UNEXPECTED
If you love neutrals then you may feel your colour palette is starting to feel a bit blah. So if you want to inject some colour but don’t want to brave it on the walls then add colour through some little surprises. The inside of cupboards, alcoves or under-stairs are the perfect way to do this. That way you can get really creative and choose some outrageous colours you would never have dreamt of using otherwise.
7. RHYTHM AND REPETITION
Repeating one accent colour that you dot about throughout your home is a great way of creating a cohesive scheme. It’s like a little flag in each room signalling they all belong together. It doesn’t have to be exactly the same shade, variations of it will work nicely. It’s best to give you an example to help explain.
In my house it’s pink. The inside of my front door is pink, then the cupboard under the stairs has a pink handle, then the downstairs loo at the back of the hallway is painted in a very dark, pinky-red. The stair runner has a pink trim, the bathroom has a pink rug, the nursery has pink curtains, the guest bedroom has pink roses on the bedding. You get the picture? The presence of one accent colour, even in the tiniest accessory, in every room takes you on a visual journey around the house. It’s such an easy trick to pull off so don’t forget to include one in your home scheme.
8. DON’T FORGET YOUR WOODWORK
To create a cohesive feel choose which effect you want to use on your woodwork and use the same effect throughout. My favourite is to paint in all the woodwork to match the walls. This creates a really calming feel as well as making your rooms feel larger. The alternative is to make a feature of your woodwork, if it’s beautiful, and paint it in a contrasting colour to your walls. Or you can choose one colour, like an off-white, that works with all the colours. It depends on what suits you and your home, just make sure you are consistent in each room to create the desired effect.
So are you feeling up to it? Are you ready to give it a go? It’s actually not as scary as it seems if you take it step by step. And if you bottle it then just give me a call. I offer my interior design services, including colour consultancy, across Southampton & Hampshire and I’d love to help you.
Good luck,
Sarah x
