Add Some Colour!
Summer is over and the days are dramatically shortening. Autumn has arrived, and we have to face another long and grey winter. This is the right time to revitalize your life and your home. You don’t need to redo the entire decor – just add some colour to your house and both your mood and your interior will change.
Dealing with colour is not always easy, and there are some basic rules that need to be followed:
Try not to mix too many colours together, especially if you are a beginner. There are marvellous rooms where blues, reds and greens perfectly cohabit, however you will need a little experience to handle this match.
If you decide to paint the walls in a bright, strong colour, you won’t need to make use of too much soft decoration. Coloured walls are sufficient to decorate a room and can communicate a very elegant feeling. Moreover you will save money.
Avoid dark colours if your room isn’t very bright, or at least paint one wall with a darker colour and the others with brighter ones. Remember if you select a brilliant colour in a bright room, the effect will be accentuated, and the colour may seem even brighter.
If you love bright colours, go for them, but use white or neutral hues for the fabrics (curtains, bed linen, sofa covers) and neutral wooden tones for the furniture. Floors should also be neutral, black, or grey, and the material should be wood, carpet, or tile.
Inversely, if your room is neutral (white or grey walls, wood floor) you can lighten your interior by using bright colours like green, pink, orange, or yellow. Use those colours for the curtains, carpets, bed linen, or even your canopy’s curtains. If your clothes cabinet is not that eye-catching, remove the doors and replace them with a coloured curtain. This can be a nice solution for a kid’s room.
If your room is dark, go for neutral colours on the walls and use some bright shades (yellow or green) for the sofa, a red old style Chinese table, or some coloured paintings on the walls to enliven your interior decor.
If you decide to repaint your bathroom, you can go for colour. Whatever hues you pick, just match them with a nice white-framed mirror, white cabinet and white marble. Finally, as usual, buy a lot of colourful flowers!
Domitilla Lepri is the owner of Shanghai-based DL Architecture, a firm specialising in renovation and interior decoration. If you have an interior design question you’d like her to answer in a future column, please email her at [email protected].
