Decorating Color Guide
Learn the Rules for Your Room

The color in your room is affected by where you live, and the direction your windows face.

I'll show you how to choose the right color to suit the natural lighting in your home...

You can use this page together with the Color Checklist to keep track of what you need to know to make your own color decisions...

Remember, decorating with color isn't just affected by your own personal preferences, style, and the size and shape of your room...

You can change your artificial lighting and interior lighting fixtures in your home, to suit your interior design requirements...

But your source of natural light is actually much more important.

Decorating color, and the colors you choose, will be very different, depending on what part of the world you live in...

Northern Cool

If you live in cool, northerly climes, the quality of the sunlight has a crisp, cold, bluish tinge...

Instead, you may want to warm it all up with some earthy reds, pinks or yellows...

A lot of this has got to do with the intensity of the color...

Take a look at the rather muted tones used in the northern rooms above - which have a cold and blue-tinged natural light...

Keeping it soft lets it work well - the bright, vibrant colors used in the picture below work best in bright light conditions with a warm glow (hot countries, with bright sunlight)...

They could look rather harsh and garish under a cool northern light...

If this is your home, and you love those bright colors, don't despair if you do live in the north, though...

Keep those strong decorating colors to bright flashes of accents - they'll lift your color scheme right up...

Feelin' Hot

If you do live somewhere warm and sunny, like the Mediterranean, Florida, or California - firstly, lucky you!

Secondly, the light here is much warmer in tone, as well as temperature.

Paint it all over if you want - and enjoy the color!

These decorating color guidelines will explain why that great color scheme, that looked so gorgeous in the magazine, will never look good in your home.

I am really glad I found out about these guidelines - they have really helped me with my color choices.

I hope you will find them just as helpful - and inspiring!

Remember though, to use them as guidelines.

If you have got your heart set on a particular color, or color scheme, and you feel it will work for you - then go ahead and try it!

Using colors you love, will make sure you love your room too.

Which Way Do Your Windows Face?

North Facing Rooms

• North facing room - or room with little sunlight:

  Use yellows, pinks and reds.

South Facing Rooms

• South facing room - or room with bright sunlight/room with sunlight all day:

  Most colors will look good - especially golds and creams.

East Facing Rooms

• East facing room - or room with morning sunlight:

  Use greens and blues.

West Facing Rooms

• West facing room - or room with evening/afternoon sunlight:

  Use peaches and terracottas.
  

If you live in the southern hemisphere, you should reverse/swap the advice for north and south colors

(East and West will remain the same)

More Decorating Color Rules for Light

• Any room with plenty of natural, or artificial, light, will suit deep, dramatic and vibrant colors.
• Dark rooms suit pastel, pale and cooler tones, as well as white.

  You might also want to brighten them up with accents of yellow, red or warm orange.

• Rooms used mostly in the evenings will suit deep colors, better than pale ones.

Generally speaking, you can decorate:

• Large rooms in dark or vibrant colors
• Small rooms in pale colors and cool colors
• Dark rooms in light and bright colors

Find out more in the interior decorating information section on room proportion.

Here you can discover how to manipulate your space - make your room look good, and achieve the proportions you want.

You can learn more about the color rules elsewhere on this website...

Understand how to use interior design color rules in your home to create gorgeous decorating schemes

Don't forget to make notes on how these color rules apply to your room on your Decorating Color Checklist...

Choose your color...

Click to discover how color in interior design can affect your mood, or learn how to choose a mood for your room

Get ideas and inspiration for decorating color schemes using blues

Get ideas and inspiration for color schemes using greens

Get ideas and inspiration for color interior design schemes using reds

Get ideas and inspiration for decorating a home ideas using yellows

Also look at the section on lighting - to discover how your choice of light bulb and interior lighting fixtures, can affect your decisions on decorating in color.

Link back up to the main page on decorating with color.

Return from this decorating color guide to the Home Page

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