10 Tips for Choosing the Perfect Interior Color Schemes for Your Home

Choosing the right color scheme for your home’s interior can be a difficult task. The colors you choose for your walls, furniture, and decor have a significant impact on the overall look, feel, and functionality of each room. By following some key tips and using helpful tools like room planner apps, you can create stylish, cohesive color palettes that reflect your personal taste and style. Read on for ten essential tips to help you pick the perfect color combinations for every room

1.     Use Color Psychology to Set the Right Mood

Color has the power to influence our emotions and energy levels. When selecting a color scheme, think about the mood you want to create in each room. For example, cool blues and greens work well in bedrooms because they have a calming effect, while warm reds and oranges are ideal for kitchens and dining rooms where you want to inspire excitement and appetite. Neutral, earthy tones like beige promote relaxation in living spaces.

2.     Consider the Room’s Purpose and Traffic Flows

Choose color palettes that align with how you use each room in your home. High-traffic spaces like hallways and foyers do well with durable darker hues like gray, navy, and brown. Reserve bright whites for rooms where you want a clean, airy feel like bathrooms. In home offices and other productivity spaces, stick with colors shown to enhance concentration like blue, yellow, and green.

3.     Use a 60-30-10 Split for Balanced Color Combos

A popular guideline for creating cohesive, harmonious color schemes is to choose one main color for 60% of the room, a secondary color for 30% of the room, and an accent color for the final 10%. For example, in a living room, you might choose a warm tan as the dominant shade, a sky blue for throw pillows and other decor, and yellow as the accent in vases and artwork.

4.     Complement Wall Colors with Appropriate Furniture

Make sure the hues you select for large surfaces like walls work well with your existing or planned furniture. Cool-toned grays, blues, and greens pair nicely with metal and glass furniture, while warm wood pieces match best with walls in corresponding earth tones, pale yellows, and terracotta.

5.     Use Accessories for Pops of Color

Painting your walls in colorful shades can feel risky, so instead, opt for neutral wall colors like white or gray as the backdrop and inject personality through decorative accents like throw pillows, art, rugs, and other accessories, which are easier to swap out over time as trends change.

6.     Apps Can Help

If you’re still struggling to envision how different colors will look together in a room, taking advantage of room planner software and apps can make the process much easier. With room planner apps, you can gain confidence that the colors and combinations you select will coordinate as envisioned, so there are no surprises once the actual painting begins. Taking advantage of these powerful digital design aids can simplify what would normally be a daunting color selection process.

7.     Ask Friends and Family for Opinions

Don’t be afraid to consult interior design-savvy friends and family as you narrow down your color options. A fresh perspective can point out combinations you may not have considered. Share photos of your current room along with some color scheme possibilities you’re mulling over and ask for their thoughts.

8.     Browse Paint Brand Websites for Color-Combination Ideas

Many major paint brands like Behr, Benjamin Moore, and Sherwin Williams offer inspiration galleries on their websites showcasing stunning color schemes for every room. Browse the photos to find combinations that appeal to you. You can often order coordinated palette sample strips for just a few dollars.

9.     Order Paint Swatches Before Committing

Never choose a paint color based on how it looks on a tiny sample chip alone. Different hues can look very different on an entire wall. Before making any final color decisions, invest a couple of dollars per hue to order 8″ x 10″ paint swatches. Paint the swatches on your walls in the appropriate rooms and view them at different times/lighting. This gives you a much better sense of how the colors will look once your entire space is coated.

10.  Hire a Color Consultant if You Are Unsure

For a small investment, you can hire a professional color consultant to help identify and refine an interior color palette tailored to your home and preferences. Many consultants offer both virtual and in-person services. They will evaluate the architecture, lighting, usage, and vision for each room before presenting you with an ideal color scheme and corresponding paint recommendations to implement it.

With an endless array of paint and decor options at your fingertips, planning a cohesive yet unique color scheme for your home can feel overwhelming. By following the interior design tips above you can feel confident tackling your color selection process.