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Before making any choices about paint color, upholstery, curtains, linens, tile, or anything decorative in the Red House, I knew wanted to pick the colors that worked together and that would make me feel happy and comfortable in my home. I want to feel warm and nourished in my space, and to highlight certain moods like the feeling of being in a green forest, near a cool blue lake.
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Color wheel and neutral color choices for The Red House
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We’re not planning to sell our house, we’re planning to live in it.
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Home decorating has its fashion trends just like any other creative industry. These days the advice is to use bland neutrals for fixed elements, and rely on accessories and easily swapped out decorative pieces for pops of color. That makes sense in a rental, or if you plan to show a house and you want potential buyers to be able to imagine their furnishing in the space, but I don’t love the bland gray or beige neutral minimalism. I want to use a bit more color, since I am decorating for myself and not for strangers. n
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Currently the trends even for color-lovers seem to lean toward muted, soft shades. I headed to the paint store and grabbed a big stack of Benjamin Moore color cards. I brought them home and spread them out on the table, carried them around the house, cut them apart and stuck them to the walls. In this house, those muted shades all look like putty. I was very surprised to figure out that I’m going to need more bright and saturated colors to work with the lighting in our older house.
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Making a Color Wheel
Once I had the paint colors chosen for most of my rooms, I arranged the color cards into a wheel on a makeshift design board (it’s the pantry wall) with the neutrals next to them in a row. From a selection of linen fabric swatches I included choices for coordinating window shades. I have also made a digital palette using Spoonflower’s color map, so that I can use these colors to create print fabrics for table linens, quilts, and upholstery projects. That is how I made the digital color wheel on this page.
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Designing the Rooms
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Now that I have narrowed down the color scheme for the house, I can start to create palettes for each individual room, choosing from areas of this color wheel to highlight different colors and moods. I may use primarily greens in one room, but if I add a pop of yellow in a vase or a cushion, it will create a cohesive feeling when that same yellow is used more extensively elsewhere in the house.
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