Adding color to your home’s design is remarkably impactful on the atmosphere. In fact, designers believe that the best way to completely change the environment is by painting your walls. With this in mind, you can see how important choosing the right color can be. However, there are millions of colors to choose from, and this task can feel overwhelming. When trying to select a color for your room, there are four basic rules you should keep in mind. With these in mind, your search can become a little less random and more focused on the right color choice for your home.

Color Inspiration

You will want to have general inspiration going into your project. What colors do you like? Do you have a style or design theme that you would like to mimic in your home? What colors are used as inspiration in those themes or styles? These questions can all help you dial in the choice of where to begin. Do you want a warm-toned atmosphere or a cool-toned atmosphere? Perhaps you are just looking for a neutral color tone in your room. Your color inspiration can come from many different influences. Determine what you want your home to look like before beginning your search.

Match Your Current Furniture and Belongings

If you still have no idea where to begin, use your current furniture or belongings to create a color theme. For instance, maybe you have a blue couch or beige lamp shades. Your personal belongings can be a great start at picking a color. Use these elements to help determine a theme. Even if all your furniture is a different color, the choice you choose should help harmonize your furniture.

Team Effort

If you do not live alone, you should not make this decision alone. Check with your spouse or your roommates because paint is there to last. You want to make sure everyone agrees before making the commitment of painting a room.

Test Your Paint on Your Walls

Lastly, paint can look completely different on a swatch in the store than in your own home. Most stores will have overhead fluorescent lighting. Take your paint choices home and put them on your walls. Look at them throughout the day. They may look different with the influence of natural lighting. Make sure the color you choose agrees all day with your home’s theme.

These rules can help narrow down your decision. Yet, all in all, choosing the right color comes down to you and your personal preferences. Try picking several colors or shades. Decide which one works best with what you want to accomplish in your home.

Over the years, we have seen more and more shades of grey come into the marketplace. It has been a staple in home design and fashion for several years as a great neutral option while also feeling very sophisticated. Since some homeowners are hesitant that grey may be too dark, the design industry provides a broad spectrum of shades. With a spectrum ranging from black and white (literally), grey is an extremely versatile option to use in your own design. It will not clash with other colors but can feel elegant and timeless. Here are some great ideas to consider when decorating and designing your space with the color grey:

Grey Works Well with Cool Tones

Grey works great with complementing the cool tones throughout your home. It feels very grounded in nature and can help bring out the balance in rooms using cool tones. Use softer cool tones and the color grey to neutralize the space. You can even use black and white to accessorize your space without crossing out of your grey color palette.

Grey Works Well with Warm Tones

Grey can also work very well with warm tones. It can emphasize and balance your warm reds, oranges, and yellows while adding a darker neutral tone to the room. Where beige and tan can sometimes reflect too much into red tones and overwhelm the space, grey can help make the area grounded. It works great at complement to warm wood tones and other wood elements as well. When adding grey in spaces with warm tones, you will not get a dreary environment but a very well-grounded and established design.

Grey Is Sophisticated

Colors can influence moods. Grey is known to be a cool, neutral color that can create balance. It has a broad spectrum of moods, from dull and dingy to formal and sophisticated. It is incredibly diverse and can be used in any room. This is a quiet and reserved color, yet it can also be very influential. It is not very common to get a pure grey from just black and white mixed together. Most greys will have subtle hues of blues, greens, or yellows in them to help spruce up the space.

Empower your living space by incorporating grey. Using it throughout your design is never a bad decision. It works in almost all atmosphere and can be a great addition through flooring, cabinets, wall paint, décor, and more. Knowing when and where to use grey is vital.

What do you think of the grey color craze lately? Is it just a fad, or is grey really the perfect color for design? Let us know your thoughts below in the comment section!

If you love this color, there’s good news for you this year. Pantone, the company that provides color palettes to manufacturers, graphic artists and designers has selected a pinkish red, called Honeysuckle, as its color of the year for 2011.

When Pantone highlights a color like this one, you will soon see it in a variety of consumer products. From fashion to furniture, designers and manufacturers focus on color trends and recommendations.

If you want to bring this color or any other light bright tones into your home, you can’t do better than a light wood floor such as this one as the foundation. You can see from the photo that light pinks and blues work beautifully with this floor.

This particular floor is a maple hardwood, but bamboo would also complement the colors. If you want your color options to change with the trends, the seasons or your own mood, this floor is a good start. Add in furniture with washable white slipcovers and other neutral shades, and then use pillows, throws, area rugs and accessories to focus your color choices. By changing out a handful of easily-replaced elements, you can create an entirely new feel for any space in your home. This is a perfect option if you love color but don’t want to settle for just one combination.

Light wood floors are a perfect choice for the changing needs and desires of children. Beautiful in a nursery, this wood floor grows as the child does, allowing for dramatic variations in color and style over time. Even a dramatic adolescent choice of black for the walls would be softened to some extent with the light floor.

If you’re looking for flexibility and durability, consider the advantages of a light wood, bamboo or laminate. It will provide the range you need to make décor changes over time.