Choosing the Right Colors
Color is one of the most important, yet one of the most difficult decisions
you will make for your home. With the tens of thousands of possibilities, made
up of shades and tints of every hue, it can be pretty daunting to hone
everything down and make the right decision for you and your home.
Consider some of these facts
before you decide:
1) Yellow, orange and red are
very warm colors and will advance toward you. They will make objects appear
closer than they are in reality. They are good for very large rooms where you
want to make the room appear more intimate.
2) Violet, blue and green are
generally cool colors and will do just the opposite. They will recede from you
and make it look as if they are further away than they really are. These are
good choices in very small rooms, like bathrooms, where you want the room to
appear larger than it is.
3) Since kitchens are commonly
very warm when it comes to room temperature, cool colors in this room will
help to neutralize that warmth.
When You're Not Sure What Color Will Work Best
1) Gather all the swatches and
samples you wish to consider and bring them home.
2) Take the samples to the room
under consideration and view them in the lighting conditions of the room, both
during the day and at night. This is important because of a phenomenon called
"metamerism". Colors will appear to "change" depending on
the type of light source they are seen under. If you look at carpeting, for
example, in a showroom lit6 by cool fluorescent lights, and you bring the
sample home and view it under warm incandescent lights, you very may find the
color appears to have changed. Cool lights are notorious for sucking the
life out of beige colors, for instance.
And it's not just whether you
use incandescent vs. fluorescent lighting. Other factors that will influence
your colors are: the time of day (morning, noon, late afternoon); the
direction of natural light (north, south, east, west); the weather and season
(summer, sunny, winter, overcast, rainy, snowy). Other factors include: color
processes, color classes and color-matching processes between manufacturers.
Colors most likely to have a
metameric problem are: tan, grays, taupe, lilac, mauve, blue/gray and
celadon.
4) Reflected light, say from
large colored surfaces such as walls, ceilings, and floors can also change the
way a color looks. If you doubt this, select one of your paint samples and put
in the middle of a table. Place another sample right next to it. Does
the first color appear different? How about the second color? Now
change the second color or a third color. Has the first color
changed? How about the third color?
3) Frustrated by the small size
of your sample and not sure how it will look en masse on a wall? An easy
way to get a better feeling: Hold the sample up close to one eye so that it
"covers" the wall you are considering. Keep both eyes open as
you now look past the sample and at the wall. The eye with the sample in
front of it will see just the sample. The other eye will see the wall and the
room. The sample will appear to "fill" the wall and you'll get
an immediate feeling for what it will look like once you have covered a wall
with it. This should help you make your final decision.
Finally, the only sure way to
go, particularly with paint choices, is to purchase a small can of your final
choice. Apply a brush out to a large area of the wall. To avoid
color surprises, this is the only really safe way to preview interior or
exterior paint colors.
Hue
Hue is a word often used in the
same way as the word "color", but it actually is the distinguishing
difference between colors. Hue is the redness of red, the greenness of green,
the blueness of blue. Hues are pure and undiluted colors. The three primary
colors are red, blue and yellow. It's the mixtures of these three colors that
produce every other color. Secondary colors are green, violet and orange.
There are hundreds of different
hues and millions of variations of each hue, all which can be detected by the
human eye.
Change a hue or create a new
one by combining neighboring hues. For instance, when you combine blue and
violet, you get blue-violet.
Create harmony or contrast by
the way you combine hues. Create harmony and restfulness with combinations
that are next to each other on the color wheel. Place yellow next to violet to
create contrast and excitement.
Use hues to create the effect
of the desired temperature in your home
Quirks of the Color Quest
We all know that
consumers demand novelty. The marketing mantra, "Today’s sensation is
tomorrow’s blank stare," sums up the ebb and flow of color trends.
The turn of the millennium has intensified the quest for a color or colors
to mark this momentous point in time. In the meantime, everyone is already
trying to pinpoint the next hot new color. These may well be two different
quests. Nevertheless, whether it’s the millennium color, the emerging
color for the decade, or the color for 2001, any new color or colors are not
only going to get the consumer to pay attention, but to pay a good price as
well.
We need to remember that several important factors affect the selection and
application of any "new" color in advertising (or any other visual
communications medium, for that matter): The product or service, the target
audience, and the communications medium itself. Steely blues may seduce in a
Cartier ad in Town & Country or an Audi TV spot. A pungent orange of the
Banana Republic ad may jolt in Wallpaper and at the Luhring Augustine
Gallery web site. Still lurking in the shadows are the bittersweet
temptations of the avocado green used by Razorfish in its Red Herring ad and
lime-tinted tequila commercials.
When "cutting edge" colors are applied to the actual product,
we’ll find that the life expectancy of the object plays a significant
role. Most of us may impulsively buy a lime green t-shirt, yet decide not to
invest in the new Volkswagen beetle in any such trendy shade. What may be a
runaway success in fashion may not apply to cars or interior furnishings.
Now that the Internet has become a significant medium for advertising,
"trendy" colors are even more problematic on a global level. A
good case in point is the emergence of purple in the States during the 80s.
By the end of that decade and through the early 90s, the color has made its
way into virtually all industries, from music ("Purple rain" by
the artist then known as Prince) to filmmaking ("The color
purple") and fashion, not to mention visual arts. Even the car makers
have joined the parade, with purple being one of the colors of macho trucks
manufactured by Ford around 1995. Yet, certain shades of purple have always
been powerfully aligned with death and morbidity in Catholic Europe.
Although in recent years, some of these negative connotations have been
shed, and the color has slowly gained new associations with fun and
cheerfulness in American culture, thousand-year-old traditions of other
countries are not easy to overcome.
All things considered, color trends are a complex issue, one which is not
easily defined by simple color predictions. Efforts to pinpoint the
"magic" color or color family usually rely upon other lifestyle
influences, such as television, films, music, magazines, social issues,
contemporary events, and a multitude of other sources. Now that the Web has
exponentially increased this visual bombardment, we see more images and
colors than ever before. It’s likely that this trend is going to continue
at a rapid pace.
Amidst this present frenzy, it would be wise to cautiously review the
history of recent color trends in the hopes of finding some clues for our
present quest. For one, America’s fascination with green during the early
90s has given birth to the popularity of yellow-green in the middle of the
decade. For the past 5 years, avocado and acidic lime greens have permeated
the visual landscape in the US. From magazine ads to websites, shades of
yellow-green have been the prescription for an attention-grabbing look.
Today, a trip to the Gap or Neiman Marcus easily confirms that these colors
are still alive and well in the world of fashion. Is anyone not offering a
t-shirt in some shade of yellow-green this year?
Historically, shades of yellow-green first became popular during the
"green, gold, and copper" refrigerator days of the 60s and early
70s. Ironically, an avocado refrigerator since became a symbol of a
horrendous lapse in what some refer to as "taste." Perhaps it was
the flood of appliances and day-glo hippie posters that did it, or maybe it
was color trend burn-out, but finding a shirt or bath towel in this color
was almost impossible in the 80s. Nevertheless, by 1995, yellow-based greens
were infiltrating the visual landscape again. Advances in textiles and dyes
made brilliant lime a staple in the fashion industry, thus fulfilling the
standard that a color can be reinvented in exciting new ways. Other
variations — the resurrected avocado and olive green — were new again,
at least in terms of the collective consciousness of a youth-oriented
American culture.
That is precisely why orange may very well be moving into the forefront of
the color parade. Therefore, one might say that Clue #1 is "The shock
of the new." Find a color that hasn’t put in a tour of duty during
the past 20 years and/or zap it with a new look, and chances are excellent
that it has the potential to succeed as an attention-getting color.
Interestingly, prior to the recent avocado/lime green rage, most people
intuitively felt that these were "sickly" colors and avoided them.
They were right. In fact, they had been known to induce nausea and were —
and remain — banned from aircraft interiors. Any sailor would tell you to
avoid shades of yellow green.
As we turned our sights to orange, substantial research (including the data
gathered at The Global Color Survey at www.colormatters.com and the Pantone
Consumer Color Preference Study® dated June 1996) documented that orange is
one of Americans’ least favorite colors. (It’s interesting to note that
orange was always a favorite color in the Netherlands, for the precise
reason that the country’s ruling monarchy is the House of Orange.) In
1991, Forbes called attention to orange’s mundane associations in its
December 23 article, "Does orange mean cheap?" Yes, it does.
(EDITOR'S NOTE: However, orange is one of the "hot" colors of
2002-03. I would use it sparingly, however.)
In sum, the States are now looking at an unpopular cheap color coming on the
heels of a sickly acid hue. Hence, clue #2 is: "It’s so bad, it’s
good."
Psychologically, the "anti-aesthetic" colors may well capture more
attention than those on the aesthetically-correct list. History clearly
demonstrates that this has been a prevalent trend in art since the turn of
the 20th century, when Dada’s urinals and snow shovels put an end to the
era of Matisse and French Impressionism.
But what about the rest of the spectrum? There is a substantial mass of
humanity who make educated and, more importantly, individual taste judgments
about color. That is precisely why we should consider the fact that we are
becoming more diversified as we expand our consciousness in this new
millennium. The quest for a singular color or emerging colors is something
we love to talk about, but few of us practice it in real life.
Yet, there is no question that color will continue to communicate on a
subliminal level. A metallic blue Mitsubishi TV spot and an orange Polo ad
in Fortune are guaranteed to pack punch. Hold on to your wallets.
©2000 Jill Morton (Used by permission)
About the author:
Jill Morton is an internationally-recognized color consultant whose
clientele includes industry giants Nokia and Kodak. Publications such as
Fortune, Entrepreneur and Metropolis have all sought her editorial
commentary about the red-hot “scientific art” of color. Before the
arrival of the Internet, Jill served as faculty at the University of Hawaii
School of Architecture, Chaminade University, and Matsuda Technology Center.
In addition to maintaining an incredible online resource for color
information, she is the author of, a series of books about color theory and symbolism.
Selecting Your Style
Do you have a specific style
that you're decorating in? Not sure? Let me help you break it down into
easy segments. What do you really want in your home? Here's a check list
to help you define your personal style and that of your family:
- Formal
- Conventional
- Modern
- Serene
- Dignified
- Simple
- Graceful
- Quaint
|
Informal
Unconventional
Traditional
Exhilarating
Casual
Cluttered
Plain
Sophisticated
|
Now go back through the stacks of photographs you've clipped out of magazines and eliminate
the ones that don't fit your choices above. Then look through the list below to define
the type of "feeling" you ideally want for your room or rooms to evoke:
- Elegant
- Conservative
- Flamboyant
- Ordinary
- Dull
- Youthful
- Playful
- Luxurious
|
Amusing
Grandiose
Strong
Bold
Graceful
Offbeat
Plain
Ostentatious
Amusing |
Dramatic
Sedate
Common
Whimsical
Opulent
Powerful
Understated Elegant
Understated Casual
|
You may choose one or a combination of any of the above. Now go through the remaining photographs
and eliminate all pictures that do not fit into the category or categories of "feeling" that you have
chosen from above. After you've done this, you should really be able to focus in on the style and
feeling that is right for you and your family.
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