Picking color

Color Whell

Designing your house is not an easy task. No wonder interior designer charge a lot to make your house looks nice. My parents are very practical people and since I moved out of their house, I have been living in rental apartments, I always live in places with minimal design. In fact, I never have any colours on my walls except the generic beige colour. The closest design experience I ever have is buying IKEA furnitures and arrange them to fit inside my room.

I am a baby to home design, so I have much to learn. The first lesson in home design is choosing a colour scheme for you home. I found this task very challenging. When presenting hundreds of colour sample from paint manufacturer, I am totally clueless on how to pick the right colour. To make it worse, men is genetically colour insensitive, since we only have 1 pair of X chromosome, which controls the colour sensing neurons.

I have been reading general rules on picking the right paints from BBC Home Design. I know there are three basic colour schemes. Tonal scheme picks colours within the same hue in different shades. Harmonious scheme picks colour next to each other on the colour wheel. Complementary colour picks colour on the oppose side of the colour wheel. Natural colour like black, gray, white or wood colour does not fit inside the colour wheel and they general blend in well with any other colour. I know what is a warm colour and what is a cool colour. I know contrast can draw focus and make the room appears to be bigger.

After picking the right colour, then we have to select where to buy the paint and what finish should we use. I like paints from Benjamin Moore, but it quite pricey and maybe too expensive for my budget. There are 6 level of finish﹐ Matte﹐ Enamal﹐ Eggshell, Satin, Semi-Gloss and Glossy, from flat to shiny. Matte is most common for walls. I would like to try Enamal on hallways and Eggshell on Kitchen. The question is how does it look when mixing different finish.

I don’t have strong preference on colour. I like blue in general but it may not looks very well on walls. I don’t like making subjective decisions. I am happy with Pat’s pick on colour as long as it is not is in pink, which is a girl colour. I tried Pat’s idea to the 3D house model. The colour shows up on screen is not the same in reality, but the program helps me visualize how the paint looks like on wall. We tried a few different colours, but honestly I couldn’t tell what’s beauty and what’s not. I know how to check whether the colour violate the rules of colour wheel, but other than that they all looks the same to me.

Family Room:
family_room

Living Room:
living_room

2 thoughts on “Picking color”

  1. Why are you making yourself suffering from ‘thinking too much’????

    If you have taken classes in drawing and painting in childhood, you can imagine yourself being the person who creates out from the color that gives you the most energy!!!

    Perhaps one day, I should take you to see Dr. Art (the psychologist) in Richmond for color therapy… =)

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