Homeowners often become overwhelmed when it comes time to choose a color scheme for a room. When you choose a color scheme, once you settle on one color you have to determine what other potential colors to incorporate into the room as well. So what’s the best way to choose a color scheme? The best way to approach this is to consult a color wheel.
What Is the Color Wheel?
Sir Isaac Newton was the first to use the color wheel. He performed an experiment with a prism. Essentially, he discovered that pure white light had a wide spectrum of colors that would reflect. This spectrum of colors, known as the color wheel, has been used ever since for decorating and classifying colors.
The Classification of Colors Using the Color Wheel
The color wheel is made up of three categories of color.
1. First, you have the primary colors, which are red, yellow, and blue.
2. Next you have the secondary colors, which are orange, green, and violet. The primary colors are mixed together to create these colors.
3. Then you have the tertiary colors, including red-orange, yellow-orange, blue-green, and yellow-green. You combine the primary colors with the secondary colors next to them to create these colors.
Monochromatic Color Scheme Explained
If you choose to go with a monochromatic color scheme, expect the result to look exactly as it sounds. Essentially, you pick one color and use only that color for the entire room. To achieve the monochromatic color scheme, you want to pick varying shades of that color, from light to dark. By using white here and there in the design, you can help break up the color a little bit.
Analogous Color Scheme Explained
With an analogous scheme, you include anywhere from two to six different colors a room. You want to use colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. For instance, the color red would use orange or purple as accent colors, since they are the colors next to red on the wheel. Start with your main color first, and then you can choose between you accent colors.
Complementary Color Scheme Explained
When looking for a decorating scheme, people will often go with a complementary color scheme. When you decide on your main color, you then go directly across that color on the wheel to find your complementary color. For yellow, for instance, the complementary color would be in the purple family. But if your color is green, you would look in the pinks. Of course, you can play with this a little, mixing the family of colors. For instance, it could be green and pink, or it could be green and red.
Triad Color Scheme Explained
The triad color scheme is also a very popular design scheme among homeowners. In this case, you use a three-color combination that on the color wheel forms a triangle together. One example of a triad would be the colors orange, green, and purple. Here you have a couple of options. You can choose to make one of these colors your main color and use the other two as accent colors, or you can choose two main colors and then accent with the third.
No matter what color scheme you choose for your home, remember that both white and black are neutrals. Thus, they can be added to any colors without changing the color scheme too much. By playing around with the color wheel and some of these color scheme suggestions, you will be able to come up with some great options for the rooms in your home.
About the Author…
Leon Tuberman has been in the home furnishings and interior decorating industry for 4 decades. He is the owner and manager of popular furniture store in California. They have a huge inventory of handcrafted American built solid oak furniture for your bedroom, dining room and living room. It doesn’t matter whether you’re shopping for a oak nightstands for your master bedroom or a dining table for your formal dining room then they carry everything you need.