Choosing Color Can Be Easier.

You could use an Easy Button to push when it comes to choosing colors for your decorating projects, so I thought I’d tackle that for you this week. Of course, I can make a palette out of every color, but that would just overwhelm you, right? No one really wants too many choices. We all want to see the best choices and then make a decision and move on.

So I looked through some project photos, pulled out the colors that worked well together and Voila! Color palettes!

Here goes:

Soft blue walls with a pop of purple

A note - I’m not going to tell you the official names of any of these paint colors. If I did, you would be disappointed when you put them on your own walls. The lighting is different at your house, your computer screen is different and your eyes are different. I’m going to tell you what to look for in the colors - or what area of the paint store the staff can guide you to. If you need more color clues, feel free to ask in the Comments.

Ok, now let’s look at that picture again:

I love adding purple to a room. It’s exciting and luxurious. In the room above, it’s the accent on a large pillow and is found in the fabric on the windows. This shade a bright undertone - not dull or dusty.

Purple is a terrific contrast against a spa-like wall color that I call blue/green/gray. You might call it a very light teal. The furniture in this room is a rich, aged cherry, but other wood finishes would still work well with these colors. Mix in some soft black (like the frame around the art) because black always sharpens things up.

By the way, you can click on these pictures for closer inspection.

Deep green walls with a splash of blue

Green is one of the easiest colors to live with and has a very wide range of options. Look outdoors at trees and bushes and you’ll see strong undertones of yellow, blue and gray. The strong green shown above is absolutely gorgeous on walls, especially when the woodwork is white.

Using this palette, I put brown woven wood shades on the windows, a navy blue lamp and a painted navy end table next to the black bed. Blue and green are naturals together. Adding black and brown completes the outdoor effect. It’s a handsome color palette.

Spring green walls love other greens

The spring-green in this next palette is surprisingly easy to add to a room. The photo with the window treatment is an example of why I’m not telling you the name of the paint swatches. It looks very yellow in the photo, but in reality, it’s definitely green, although with yellow undertones (which is what spring green is).

Follow Mother Nature’s lead and mix up your greens. Here I put a traditional grass green with the springy version and added a pale-to-medium blue that’s in the plaid fabric of the roman shade. This combination is super pretty with white furniture and gold accents, but also looks terrific next to dark browns or even black.

Tropical hues play well with other tropical hues

My current remote project in Florida is always on my mind, so I couldn’t leave it out of this post. The color palette is spectacular! The client wanted the house to look beachy, but also elegant. This time the green is getting closer to lime, but still with a lot of yellow in the undertone.

I promise that a shot of this kind of green looks great with many color combos. You just need to use it sparingly, so that it’s a special accent.

Mixing the green with coral, turquoise and white creates a palette that is actually very easy to live with. Most of the colors are of equal strength (bold), with a palette cleanser of a very pale blue thrown in. I”m recommending a gold metal finish sprinkled around, but silver would look just as nice.

A note about teal (which turquoise is): every teal goes with every teal. Light, dark, bright - it doesn’t matter. Teal is the easiest color to shop for accessories because they all play together very well. “Teal” is just a combination of blue and green, although there seem to be endless ways to do it.

Red and orange are BFF’s

I’m going to end with this one. Start with the pile of fabric swatches in the center: these are all fabrics I put on the first floor of a project. They’re on bedding, window treatments and upholstery in the home of two people who really love color. The flow is wonderful and you find yourself smiling a lot in their home.

I put a black “frame” around the palette in hopes that you would see how black makes these strong colors even stronger. And the little spot of white in there does nice things, too. Like in the previous palette, most of the colors are equal in strength, but when you look at the pile of fabric swatches, you can see there’s a lot of neutral background cooling things down.

Did I leave out your favorite color? Leave me a comment about it and maybe I’ll write another post with more palettes. I didn’t use rust or gold or yellow - all fantastic colors!