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6 Smart Ways To Colour Your Living Room

Updated On: Mar 18, 2024

Choosing the right living room colors is essential when painting your apartment or home. Colors are not just about aesthetics or décor. It is a visual stimulus that invokes several emotions within us and impacts our perception. Being a multifunctional common area, your living room deserves a color palette that matches your tastes as well as establishes an all-round soothing, peaceful, and vibrant aura.

And, if you are wondering what those colors can be, this article is here to help you out. Apart from ways to choose the perfect palette, get to know how to manipulate your living room size with colors and set its ambiance.

6 Cost-Effective Ways To Choose The Perfect Living Room Colour

Choosing the wrong living room color is like getting a bad haircut. Both are equally frustrating and cost-intensive. So, here are 6 quick, easy, and cost-effective ways to select the best colours for your living room.

Colours That Compliment Your Furniture

Colours That Compliment Your Furniture

A quick and cost-effective way to choose the right colors for your living space is to match or contrast them with your furniture. When in your living room, look around and see what type of furniture you have ' is it wood, metal, glass, modern, rustic, or traditional? Additionally, see what color your living room furniture is and then simply match the color that goes best with it.

Appealing Paint Finishes

Appealing Paint Finishes

Apart from color selection, you would also have to determine the finishing you want for that paint. There are different paint finishes available in the market you can choose from, like conventional wisdom, stain resistance, satin finish, semi-gloss, or high gloss finish. These paint finishes not only help you create a visual effect but also protect your living room walls from long-term damage.

 Colour Psychology

 Colour Psychology

You may have heard about colour psychology in marketing. But guess what, it's important for your living room too. Colours impact our emotions and perception, and the color of your living room can either make you restless or calm you down. So, look up the impact of several colors on the human psyche to determine what would suit you the best. Pastel shades of yellow, green, and blue are great choices for a more calming and radiant living space.

60-30-10 Rule

60-30-10 Rule

The 60-30-10 rule says that 60% of the room should be painted with dominant colour, 30% with a secondary colour that complements the dominant one, and the remaining 10% with an accent colour that makes the other two more distinct. Choose a contrast of bold and subtle tones to create the best living room colour combinations using this method. An efficient way to use this rule is via the colour wheel.

Compare Swatches

Compare Swatches

To be assured of how the prospective colour scheme would look, always compare paint cards, colour samples, or swatches of fabric by keeping them side by side or even on the living space.

Stick to Your Taste

Stick to Your Taste

Because colour impacts our emotions and perceptions, one of the best ways to choose the perfect color for your living room is to stick to your personal tastes and intuition. Instead of trying to create an impressive living room, make a comfortable one that both you and your guests will enjoy.

6 Ways To Manipulate Your Living Room Area With Colors

You may have a really big living room or a small one. No matter the area, you can always create the illusion of it being a perfectly sizable living space. Let's see how.

Light Colours For Small Living Room

Light Colours For Small Living Room

Light colours make the space look more open, giving off the illusion of bigger rooms. Light and bright colours such as white, beige, and cream make smaller living rooms look larger. To make your living space look larger, paint the walls in a lighter colour with a combination of rich accent tones.

Dark Shades For Larger Living Rooms

Dark Shades For Larger Living Rooms

Dark colours give your living room a more compact, concave, and solid look. It works best for large living spaces as it balances the size of the room. However, when using darker living room colors, make sure that the furniture and other elements in and around the room have more neutral or pastel tones. Apart from adding a character to the room, this contrast offers a more edgy and distinct look.

Fifth Wall Colours To Add Height

Fifth Wall Colours To Add Height

Always treat the ceiling as the fifth wall of your room. The design of the ceiling in the living room contributes to the illusion of the room’s height, making the space look either tall and airy or short and cozy. When the ceiling is painted with softer colours, the room appears to be bigger. Also, the same colour on all five walls has its own effect.

Making The Architectural Elements More Distinct

Making The Architectural Elements

Playing with architectural features and colours optimizes the living room décor, making it look more beautiful. You can add a separate layer of living room design by making the several parts in the living room like doors, windows, wainscot, arched doorways, built-in bookcases, mantels, moldings, etc., more vibrant.

Colours That Introduce Flow 

Colours That Introduce Flow 

Continuity is essential for any room décor. Colours can be used in big open spaces like living rooms to create different zones, such as separating the dining room, TV room, etc. You can stick to a single colour palette or create dustier and muted values. Softened colours can be used with bright colours in smaller doses for floor coverings or furnishings. This will not only help demarcate certain areas in your living space but will also offer spatial optimization.

 Space to Look Bigger and Cozier

 Space to Look Bigger and Cozier

If you want to incorporate bookshelves and study areas in your living room and want to make the room look bigger at the same time, use warm tones. Warm colours offer the coziness present in spaces like libraries, study rooms, and foyers. And, as they help create an illusion of more space, the room becomes more breathable and helps to focus as well.

6 Colour Combination Techniques To Create A Personalized Living Room  

Using two or more different wall colour combinations helps establish a personalized look for your living room. Here are six ways you can use various color combinations to beautify your room.

Accent Wall and Focal Point

Accent Wall and Focal Point

Color accent walls with vivid hues add a contemporary edge and dramatic look to the relatively featureless living room. The accent walls also provide a punch even when painted three shades darker than the primary walls creating appropriate focal points.

Add Simple Stripe of Contrast

Add Simple Stripe of Contrast

When it comes to incorporating two colours to paint your living room, you don't always have to paint entire walls with them. Sometimes a simple strip of contrasting colours helps add a distinct character to your room. The same strip applied on the opposite walls even helps create continuity evoking geometric illusions.

Combination of Neutral and Rich Colour

Combination of Neutral and Rich Colour

Traditional living room ideas use deep shades of elegant colours. This provides a more formal, traditional, and regal look. Neutral colours can be used for dominant walls with richer shades of brown, blue, red on the accent wall.

Transitional Colour Scheme

Transitional Colour Scheme

The transitional colour scheme is a blend of both traditional and contemporary looks. Fun and classy, this is a perfect choice for people in love with both traditional and modern decors.

Pairing Complementary Colours

Pairing Complementary Colours

Complementary colours, when used appropriately, makes each colour stand out. Vibrant shades muted tones add a pleasant buzz to the living space and make it livelier and brighter.

Wainscot For Better Contrasts

Wainscot For Better Contrasts

For this one, you will need wood along with paint. Wainscot is a technique of wooden paneling in the lower walls of the room and painting them with a contrasting colour. This works best if you want a more formal, traditional, or antique living room décor. A darker wainscot is normally used to draw attention to the brighter walls of the living room wall design, and a bright wainscot is in itself eye-catching. Paints can be significantly used for reinforcing the wainscotting look.

Lights, Mood and Living Room Colors

Colours help set the mood and ambiance of your living room. Understanding which color would go well, according to the light exposure, helps create an even better living room décor. So, here's 6 ways you can use colors to set the right mood for your living room.

Earthy Tones For Natural Light

Earthy Tones For Natural Light

Use earthy shades or saturated jewel tones if your living room is well lit with natural light. Make sure to use durable paints and not wallpapers as the latter often get faded with extensive exposure to sunlight.

Sunny Hues For Limited Light Exposure

Sunny Hues For Limited Light Exposure

If your living room has limited exposure to natural light, you can use vibrant shades of buttercup yellow or ivory to brighten the space. Light greens and blues also make the room look cheery and lively.

Warm Space with Warm Tones

Warm Space with Warm Tones

The distinct aspect of any living room is the warmth it provides. Colours such as burnt oranges, deep reds, different shades of gold, brown are the ones that offer the perfect glow and coziness for your living room. Such living room colour combinations help lighten up the living room in both day and dim light.

Contemporary and Calming Living Room Colours

Contemporary and Calming Living Room Colours

Cool, muted, and subtle shades of natural colours such as grays, cool violets, blues create a calm and soothing atmosphere in your living room and add a contemporary feel to it. Coupled with modern furniture and décor items, these colors help maintain a relaxing atmosphere irrespective of the time of the day or season and create a sharp, minimal, spacious, and modern look.

Elegant White Rooms to Inspire Your Home Décor

Elegant White Rooms to Inspire Your Home Décor

Whites have a staggering variety with pure, clean, and warm undertones. Designers prefer white tones to make the furnishings and other aesthetics of the room more prominent. You can also use white for the ceiling to create a neutral field overhead. One can also use warmer whites in the living rooms with lesser natural light or make a cozier look for larger spaces.

Bonus: Prints and Wall Art

Bonus Prints and Wall Art

If you think solid colours aren't enough to accentuate the ambiance of your living room, you can go for printed wallpapers or wall art. Artistic and aesthetic, they help a lot to imbibe your personal statement in the living room design. From florals and geometric patterns to abstract murals, you can choose any design and can even customize them further for your living room. Usage of wallpapers and wall art on the dominant wall helps introduce a splash of uniqueness to the room.

Conclusion

Colours play a powerful role to etch your personal statement in your living room decor. From lights, furniture, and decoration to fabrics and rugs, living room colour determines how exactly the entire décor process will be. Color preferences may change from person to person, but the right color choices always make your space radiant and inviting.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):-

 

Q. Which colour is best for the living room?

Ans: The colours for the living room depend upon many factors such as size, taste, natural light exposure, and what look you prefer for your living room. Follow the color selection methods in this article and choose accordingly to design the perfect living room.

Q. How can I design my small living room?

Ans: Use lighter shades like white, beige, or cream so that the room looks bigger. You can also use muted tones or pastel shades of blue and green.

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