Our relationship with colour influences our everyday lives, whether we realize it or not…

The powder blue that transports you back into your grandmother’s kitchen all those years ago. It still fills you with joy, stirring up memories of her loving embrace and the peace you felt every time you walked into her home.

The cardinal red that reminds you of your first car...being handed the keys and knowing that it was all yours. It was the first big, hard-earned purchase of your young adult life. You see the color now, and it fills you with excitement, energy, and pride. Can’t you just feel that sense of glee all over again?!

That’s the power of colour. 

It is so much more than a gorgeous accompaniment to a well-designed room. It sets a mood. It impacts our emotions. It evokes a feeling. 

Because of its tremendous impact on our lives, selecting colours for your home should be a thoughtful process, and I’m here to help! 

In this post, I’ll be sharing:

• The colours that are currently trending for 2021

• How to explore your own colour preferences

• The best places to add colour to your home

• What you need to know about undertones

Keep reading for all this and much more…

Colour as a Fresh Start

I frequently get inquiries at the beginning of a new year...sometimes for a complete redesign, and sometimes for a smaller-scale refresh. No matter the project, though, this time of year, the colour conversation is always front and center.

The fact is that after you put away all of your sparkling, colourful holiday decor, your home tends to feel a little lackluster. You miss the excitement of the twinkling lights and the busyness of the pretty seasonal decorations. 

So your mind starts to wander...

You realize that with the cold weather and slower pace of winter days, you have some time to take on a project. Maybe you start seeking inspiration. You discover that the paint companies have introduced their new “Colours of the Year” and, if you love them, the wheels start turning as you envision the many ways you can implement these colours into our own living spaces:

• Pantone’s 2021 colour combination of “Ultimate Gray” plus “Illuminating” (a sunny yellow) seems like a wonderful combination for a vibrant living room full of life and ready for cheerful conversation. 

• Benjamin Moore’s Aegean Teal would make a stunningly bold powder room that would be sure to have all of your guests ooh-ing and ahh-ing with each visit. 

• Maybe Sherwin WIlliams’ Urban Bronze is perfect for that architectural accent wall you’ve been dreaming of for the dining room.

Oh, and rest assured that despite the fact that these colours have earned the title “Colour of the Year”, they won’t trend out anytime soon. If you love it, it’s always in style! (And if you’re concerned about resale value, don’t worry. There are always timeless ways to inject colour into your space.)

And just like that, you’re calling up your designer with ideas for a beautiful home in this new year. You know that adding colourful decor to spaces that have otherwise dated finishes can actually help them feel fresh, updated, and fun again without a complete remodel. 

Colour is a powerful tool, so let’s get started!

Colour Preferences

The number of colours available to you might seem overwhelming...even I experience that from time to time. So what are the best ways to narrow down your own colour preferences? Here are three places that I go to for inspiration when helping clients hone in on their personal aesthetic…

#1: Your Closet

Sound silly? It’s not. Open your closet and really take a look. What is the dominant colour present? Do you see a trend? Your own closet is a great place to start because colours that you feel great in...ones that you’re comfortable wearing...will also feel good when infused into your home. 

#2: Your Pinterest

The pins you’ve saved on Pinterest, the links you’ve bookmarked on Houzz, and the images you’ve clipped from magazines speak volumes about your style and your colour preferences. If you take a look at them as a whole, you’re sure to see a certain colour scheme emerge from the majority of your collected visuals. If you like the same colours over and over on paper, you’re sure to love them even more in your own decor.

#3: Your Photos & Happy Memories

Your favourite photos are also a wonderful place to turn for colour inspiration. That photo you took on your family vacation in the mountains...the picture you snapped of the evening sunset during your weekend at the lake...the professional multi-generational family portrait you had done for your parents’ anniversary. Those are all places to draw inspiration from. 

And there are tools out there, like ColorSnap from Sherwin Williams, that will create a custom colour palette for you from any photo that you upload. Chances are, if you love the photo enough to have it framed on your wall, you also adore the colours within. 

What better way to express your life and travels than by drawing inspiration for your home from the moments that matter most to you?!

Colour Throughout the Home

When we dive into the world of colour, we start envisioning the many ways that we can showcase our personalities while also creating spaces that evoke happy thoughts each and every day. And why do that in just one room when you can infuse colour throughout your whole home?

While I love taking on any type of projects that involve colour, there are three rooms of the home that are my absolute favourite for bold colour palettes…

#1: The Powder Room

Because the powder room is rarely occupied for long periods of time, you can go a little overboard with colour in this space, and I love that. You and your guests won’t tire of the daring design when experienced in small doses, so I tend toward bold paint colours or opulent, textured, dramatic wallpaper for powder rooms. 

#2: The Kitchen

With its wide open space and vast array of finish selections, the kitchen is a blank canvas for colour. It is called the heart of the home for a reason, because you will have to live in it. As such, I don’t encourage you to go crazy with colour here, but the right amount of color can take a mundane kitchen to magnificent. 

Try a colourful backsplash in an all-white kitchen to create a lively space. Or paint the kitchen cabinets a unique colour that brings a smile to your face. And don’t forget to add colourful upholstery to the dining chairs, bar stools, and window treatments. These small decor choices add up to a room with big personality.

#3: The Bedroom

Throughout my career, I’ve found that bedrooms are one of the most flexible areas of the home, colour-wise. Because they always have a door and can be closed off from the rest of the house, they can be considered an island of their own, meaning that the colour scheme inside can be as unique as the person that occupies it.

Some of you might prefer a soothing retreat in subdued tones that exudes a spa-like serenity. Others of you might see the bedroom as a space to go big and go bold. The good news is that the bedrooms are an area of the house that not everyone has to agree on, so you’re free to express yourself with whatever hues inspire you.

Colour Undertones

But before you go crazy picking out fixtures, finishes, and colours for your space. Let’s talk undertones. In fact, undertones may be one of the most important things to understand when working with colour. Let me explain...

If you walk into a room and something feels off, most often it is due to clashing undertones. 

Consider the gray trend of the last decade. At some point, did you choose a gray paint, fabric, or floor tile for use in your home, only to realize that once it was fully installed it looked blue, green, or even purple? That is what I describe as an undertone. An undertone is the color seen through or under, the color you have chosen. Make sense?

Undertones are important to consider when you are choosing fixed finishes such as paint, stone, counters, tile, upholstery, and wood. So, it is best to identify the undertone of the neutral you want in a space and carry it through in the variety of fixed finishes that will occupy the space for cohesion in the final product.

When it comes to undertones, there are three neutral categories: whites, beiges, and grays and each category has its own subcategories of undertones...

• Whites are divided into blue-whites, true white, off-whites, and creams.

• Beiges are divided into pink, green, yellow, orange, and gold-beige.

• Grays are divided into blue, green, violet, and blue-green grays.

Sound complicated? It doesn’t have to be! As a Certified True Colour Expert, I have been trained to identify undertones and I will educate you on how to see them too. Once you get the hang of it, this is much simpler than it sounds. Promise!

I could talk colour for days, but I’ll stop there for now. It is a powerful tool with unending potential for your space, that, when used correctly, can evoke strong emotions, influence your mental health, and even change your daily life. I’m not kidding!

So, if you are feeling the winter blues with the colour palette of your house, book a colour consultation with me today. I’ll help you transform your lackluster post-holiday home into a luxurious living space that brings you joy every single day.

Until next month,
Adrienne