Everything You Need to Create a Cohesive Colour Scheme
If you don't want your house to feel like a hodgepodge of different spaces, it's worth giving some thought to a colour scheme that can run through each room. We asked paint experts and interior designers for their advice on how to do it right.
If you’re about to embark on a renovation, considering how colours can flow and work well together throughout a house is a great place to start your decorative schemes. As Patrick O’Donnell, colour consultant and brand ambassador for Farrow & Ball says, “creating flow with colour through a house can help unify your home as you drift from room to room and a good starting point for those less confident when renovating multiple rooms.” But where to start? How do you identify the colours that you like and that will work well together, no matter what size of room or aspect you’re working with.
Inspiration
Gathering inspiration is the first, most crucial part of the process. It can be daunting looking at a paint chart when you have several rooms to do, but there are ways to get your mind working on what colours go well together. Betsy Smith, colour consultant at Graphenstone, recommends starting by looking out of the window to inform your fundamental colour choices. “The external environment can inspire colour choices, whether a rural or urban landscape; bringing colours from outside in will create a seamless, harmonious connection between the two spaces.” Interior designer Anna Haines looks to nature particularly for neutrals. “Nature is always the great stabiliser, especially when looking at the depth and colour of finishes,” she says. “We steer more towards porous imperfect materials like travertine, limestone, terracotta and marble - these warm putty, earthy colours can provide the groundwork for many of our schemes.”
Ruth Mottershead, Creative Director at Little Greene, agrees that looking at what is already around you is the best place to start. “I also look to nature and the limitless colour combinations that surround us, or look closer to home, such as the colours you wear, or of the furniture you already have. You may not realise that you are subconsciously drawn to particular colours through the many choices that we all make everyday.”
Art and textiles are also wonderful places to gather ideas. “An atmospheric photograph, painting or film that captures the mood you aspire to create can form the basis of a palette,” says Betsy. “There are apps that are great such as Palette Cam and Colour Viewfinder to extract the colours for you.”
On a larger scale, drawing colours from a textile that is going to be in the room is a surefire way to find shades that go well together. “An antique textile or rug will often bind all the colours of a scheme together,” explains Anna. “Artwork is also hugely instrumental in how we develop a scheme. Much like a rug, it can lead the conversation between all the other finishes in a space.”
Without being overly simplistic, it can be helpful to look at artworks that relate to the age of your house or the type of decoration you favour: modern artists for modern rooms, and more classical artists for traditional spaces. Betsy gives the example of the Bauhaus artist Josef Albers: “He dedicated his life’s work to exploring the spatial power of colour, and his work is a go-to source of inspiration for contemporary homes.” If you own existing artworks in a room that you want to draw on, Betsy notes that it’s best to “resist the temptation to match the colours exactly. Instead, consider what colours will complement them, allowing their qualities to shine.”
Consider the individual room as well as the flow
Although you might want to focus on the idea of cohesion, don’t forget that colours need to work for the room they’re in. There’s obviously no point choosing a colour just because it goes with all of your other spaces, only to find it unfit for purpose when you close the door. “Allow the space's architecture, light and environment to inform the initial colour choices,” says Betsy. “Select hues that will bring out the best inherent characteristics will be unique to each space; this is always my foundation for creating a colour palette.” Large, airy south-facing rooms are easy to decorate, but small rooms or those with less natural light will require a bit more thought, and lots of interior designers and colour specialists recommend embracing rooms where there is a lack of light and painting them in dark, enveloping colours.
Ruth gives examples using Little Greene colours: “The kitchen is often the hub of the home and exudes life and activity, so it’s easy to opt for fresh, bold pairings such as ‘Giallo’, reminiscent of the golden sun, which will bring joy and create an energetic scheme. Dark colours, on the other hand, could work really well to harness the character of a living room by creating warmth and intimacy. Intense but natural cocooning colours such as ‘Chocolate Colour’, ‘Sage Green’ or 'Jewel Beetle', are perfect for enveloping a space with a sense of relaxation and comfort.
The principles of a cohesive colour scheme
Once you know what kinds of colours you are drawn to, and the limitations imposed on your scheme by each room, there are a few guiding principles that will help you pull it all together. As Patrick explains, “The two easiest routes for creating a cohesive scheme through your home is to either choose a colour family, often represented by the vertical presentation on manufacturers’ paint cards, or to go for colours of a similar weight, essentially different colours but all at similar strengths.”
Colour families
Colour families as a rule include colours with the same undertones, for example green-blues. Within this you might have a very pale duck-egg, for example, that might work well in a large, airy space, but also a deep, dark sea blue that could create an enveloping feel in a smaller room with less natural light. Pairing these with the right neutral shades will make for a full and versatile colour scheme that will work across several rooms.
When it comes to pairing strong colours, Betsy likes to use analogous colours. “These colours sit adjacent to each other on the colour wheel; because they connect, they will always create a unified look. These neighbouring colours don’t need to be fully saturated; they can have any amount of white or black added to make soft, muted tints or dark, dramatic shades.”
Even when just considering the ceiling and woodwork of a room and working with neutrals , the principle of using the same kind of colour at different levels of strength applies. “If using neutrals,” explains Anna, “play with different strengths of the same colour on the woodwork, cornice and ceiling to add depth. Edward Bulmer and Paint and Paper Library’s Architectural series are particularly good for this.”
Colour weights
If the idea of using similar colours (such as all blue-greens or all cool pinks) feels a bit too schematic, try using colours of the same sort of weight instead. You want to tell a story from one room to the other through colour, without it feeling overly contrived or monochromatic. You might choose to employ a series of relatively light but warm colours in every room in your house, or to make them all rich and deep instead. “If you play with colours of similar weight you’ll avoid too many colour shocks as you transition from room to room,” says Patrick. “This is not a set in stone rule and I would never advocate not being playful with colour, but it is a tried and tested formula. It makes for a seamless look and you have the option of going light, mid or dark with this formula so it’s not as restrictive as it may sound."
The Right Way to Use Neutrals
Most rooms will require a neutral for the ceilings and woodwork, unless you are going for a particularly bold approach such as colour drenching the entire room in one colour, or using contrasting colours for everything. If you’re sticking with the traditional route, you can either keep things very simple and use a versatile white or neutral for every room–”Painting the ceilings and/or the woodwork the same throughout the home will instantly marry spaces,” says Betsy–or you can select your neutrals according to the colour you have used on the walls in each room. In this case, “selecting colours with the same undertone is a simple way to ensure a group of colours work together,” explains Betsy. “For example, if you are using Carnelian as the main colour, choose a warm accompanying neutral with a tad of red. This ensures the colours are harmonious and creates a serene atmosphere.”
Using accents
Once you have the overall scheme in place, accents can be a brilliant way to enliven a room or to add further coherence to the house in general. “Introducing a small (10%) complementary hue can initiate a magical dialogue between colours,” advises Betsy. “I tend to compose colours using a 60-30-10 recipe, i.e. 60% foundation colour, 30% secondary colour and 10% accent. Use the accent to counterbalance the dominant colour characteristics to form a perfectly composed interior. For example, a small highlight of orange or amber in a cool blue interior will instantly infuse warmth and feel more welcoming.”
Accents can also be the means of tying an entire house together, and they don’t have to involve paint. An interior designer trick we sometimes see used is the repetition of the same strong colour here and there throughout the house: a strong, unmissable crimson, for example, might appear on the upholstery of a chair, the frame on a mirror and the shade of a lamp.
And if there’s one colour everyone recommends…
…it’s green. “Green is a colour that can work really well with numerous shades because of its link to nature where it pairs with a wide spectrum of colours,” says Ruth.
It is a very grounding shade, not too cold and not too warm, so it can counterbalance warmer shades as well as pair beautifully with cooler hues.” Betsy agrees. “Greens are versatile. Since they consist of both blue and yellow they can be warmed with earthy yellows or cooled with blues.”
This story originally appeared on our sister publication House & Garden UK.