Looking through decorating magazines and books, you can see that a
dramatic background color on the walls can transform a room and make
the art on the walls stand out. It can also unify the various pieces
of art, even if they are different styles or subject matter.
The most important thing in choosing a color for a room is to decide
what color inspires you. Different colors create different moods. Use
your own sense of style and aesthetics.
If you want to create a mood with a particular historical decorating
style – like Art Deco, Italian Renaissance or even mid-century
modern, follow the colors used in the furnishings and artwork from those
eras. Go to a museum and take note of the colors on the walls or glance
through a book with décor from that time period. You can follow
the look throughout your home with your artwork and frames if you want
to create a theme.
Many other factors contribute to how we can select color for a room.
Learn a little about color symbolism and color psychology. It’s
fascinating to learn why dining rooms work best with warm colors and
bedrooms work best in quiet serene colors. Pittsburgh
paint’s website has some good reading material on these topics.
Keep it simple by using one prevailing color and then perhaps one or
two accent colors. For color harmony, variations on complimentary colors
like red and green, yellow and purple and blue and orange tend to work
well in a room.
Try to understand the way colors work by studying a color
wheel. Remember learning in school about primary (red, yellow and
blue), secondary, and tertiary colors? Well, now you can apply those
rules to decorating with art!
Fine art photographs look good on any background color. Traditionally,
photo galleries were always painted a pristine white, but now just about
anything goes as decorating styles have become more eclectic and personal.
Once you’ve considered all the factors, bring home paint chips
from your local paint store and look at them at different times of the
day in the room because light will affect how the color will look in
the room.
Then, buy a quart of a color or two and test them on the walls or on
poster size foam core, and study them in the light again. Benjamin
Moore’s website has a great feature where you can actually
click on the colors and see them in a room!
And if the idea of four walls of red overwhelms of you, try just painting
one wall of that color first. Sometimes all you need is one wall of
intense color for your art and the other walls can be white.
