Paint suppliers can give you sample swatches to pick colors for your walls.
Color palettes help home owners decorate rooms with a matching profile by defining a scheme to incorporate furnishings, accents, rugs, wall colors and other upholstered items. Painting with a color palette gives you a plan for each room, and you base other decorating decisions off your base colors. Themes depend on your preferences, but home decorating magazines and home improvement stores show different variations on use color palettes. Does this Spark an idea?
Instructions
1. Examine the largest patterned piece in your space, such as an Oriental rug or multi-colored upholstered couch. Choose light colors from the pattern to create a neutral color palette in white to beige colors. Choose dark colors for a richer color palette.
2. Start painting in the front areas of your home -- such as the living room, dining room or entry way -- with a certain color scheme. Then pick one color from the color scheme for other rooms -- like the kitchen, office or bedroom. For example, if you chose a light green palette with off white, sour apple and light yellow for the living room, then pick sour apple for the office walls.
3. Use a dark to light vertical color scheme that starts with a prominent dark floor and graduates to a lighter color ceiling. For example, homes with dark wood floors might need a tan wall with a beige ceiling. This color palette resembles nature's way of the dark soil to the light blue color of the Earth's sky.
4. Choose a color from your clothes. Since you enjoy what you wear, then pick a favorite color from the clothes in your closet. If you do not enjoy yellow clothes, then you do not want to paint your walls such a color.
5. Download the Colorsnap App from Sherwin Williams that lets you snap a picture from anywhere around you then generates a color palette for you. The Colorsnap palette also lets you search by color and gives you features that lighten, saturate and create hues based on a color of your choice.
6. Paint with a color palette using the rule of 60-30-10. Interior designers turn to this percentage-based design for a formal approach. You divide the colors into 60 percent dominant color, 30 percent secondary color and 10 percent for an accent color. The walls are normally the dominant color while the upholstery and color of furniture is the secondary color. Throw pillows, picture frames and plants make up the accent color.
7. Select colors from great works of art, such as "The Mona Lisa" by Leonardo da Vinci or "The Water Lily Pond" by Claude Pierre Monet. See more color palettes based on famous paintings at Colourlovers.
Tags: color palette, color from, color scheme, accent color, color percent, colors from, dominant color
