When it comes to painting your house and adorning it with items that bring your theme to life, how do you choose the right colors? Striking color perfection often feels challenging, especially when there’s so much to choose from. At The Reflective Designer, we have years of experience in helping our clients create dream themes for their gorgeous homes. If you’re feeling a little stuck with your latest designs, we’re here to guide you through everything from color consultations to mastering the latest trends.
Consider the effect on your space
There’s no harm in embracing the fact that your home is your sanctuary. Therefore, when you engage in a color consultation, you need to consider the effect you want to have on your home.
For example, do you want your office to feel light and expansive? If so, lighter colors or chalkier shades of darker colors will work well. Or, you may have a theme in mind – such as Moroccan décor. When that’s the case, we’ll focus on the colors that act as an ideal backdrop for the remainder of your theme’s features. By considering the effect you want to have in advance, you’ll find it easier to work with us to find the right colors.
Focus your color choices on what you have
Unless you’re giving your property a complete makeover, focusing on the features you already have is an excellent way to lead your color consultations. For example, what type of furniture do you own? Are you particularly proud of your curtains and rugs? Or, perhaps there are a few ornaments you want to focus on?
When you work your color consultations around the features you already have, landing on something complementary becomes easier. This is also an excellent way to give the impression of having a complete makeover without replacing everything in your home.
Focus on how each room flows into the next
It isn’t unusual to want something different for each room. Although you may want to feel energized and uplifted upon entering your master bathroom, you’re probably seeking a sense of serenity in your bedroom. One of the biggest mistakes we encounter during the color consultation process is failing to allow colors to flow between rooms. Although the colors you choose may not rest directly next to each other, preventing them from flowing becomes jarring for all the wrong reasons.
As part of our color consultation, we help our clients find key colors and then focus on different shades for different rooms. As a result, it’s possible to achieve a sense of continuity and avoid making the results contrast too sharply.
Always carry out tests before making a commitment
Although we aim to exceed expectations with our color consultations, we always encourage our clients to try our suggestions out before making a full commitment. One of the main reasons for doing this is that you can’t truly know what a color will look like until the lighting in your home falls on it. Therefore, we’ll probably make several suggestions and provide you with swatches.
After trying a color out, observe how you feel about it for a few days. If you’re still happy with the results, there’s a strong chance that it’s the right color for you.
At The Reflective Designer, we like to make sure our color consultations are as thorough as possible. With 150 years of combined experience between us, we’re proud to serve the Phoenix and Scottsdale areas. If you’d like to arrange a color consultation, call us at 480-247-3367.
You’ve spent hours online looking at Pins, gotten all the catalogs, and finally placed your order for your new furniture and décor. The big day for delivery arrived and it was a bit anti-climactic. The trumpets didn’t blare and the angels didn’t sing. Your room looked nice enough but just didn’t have that pizazz you thought it would.
Two things at work here:
1) You were the unwitting target of carefully illuminated and photographed interior images. Want to know why a certain home décor company has that certain vibe? It’s not the furniture per se, it’s the consistent north light they photograph under.
2) Here is the primary factor defined; it’s not the furniture, wallpaper, lamps, or rugs that you selected, it’s the relationship of those objects to each other which counts. Please allow me to explain…
All material objects have an energy field. Before you stop reading and think this is a bit “woo-woo”, you definitely have experienced this. If you get uncomfortably close to another person, this is an example. If objects like furniture are not placed properly, your room feels “off”.
Of course objects don’t have energy fields like living beings but they do occupy a certain place in relationship to their environment. In design, we call these principles scale, proportion, and procession. These are abstract concepts and as such, elude most homeowners when it comes to decorating and furnishing their homes. You can’t order them online yet they are an essential component of every successful interior plan. Most of my clients think that if they just purchase the right things that the room will fall into place…and most of the time it doesn’t happen because the basic principles of design have not been at the foundation.
The placement of objects create hidden lines and shapes which you do not see, but your mind’s eye does. Horizontal and vertical lines, triangles, circles begin to emerge once you group objects together. Some of these shapes elicit repose, others create movement, and others create chaos. Did you ever wonder why there is a room in your house which nobody uses? Most likely because one or more of these elements is making it uncomfortable to be in.
Science is art and art is science. We used to think that they were on different ends of the spectrum but not really. If you were to plot your room like a histogram, you would see the areas of high interest and those bearing little. To put it another way, a well decorated room is like a sine wave, it contains rhythm and repetition within a certain desired frequency range.
This is how I approach the design of a room. Yes, the furnishings should be beautiful and please the eye and senses. However, the underlying foundation is what makes it sing. The result is a “wow” experience and is the reason which separates the professional result from the layperson’s.
Furnishing a home is not inexpensive. The last thing you want to do is be stuck with costly items which turn out to be regrets. Your professional designer will not allow for mistakes. They will save you time and worry while working under the direction of your particular tastes. If you engage with a “designer” who has a certain look to their work or uses digital color matching tools, run far away. Many people who have not used design services fear that their designer will take over and provide them with things they do not like. A professional does not do this. To be sure you engage with a pro, look for someone with formal training and a membership in a national design organization. A professional designer will help you make your home “you, but better!”.
