How to combine colors in your home decoration

Do you know what color would suit your home spaces?

Combine colors in your home decoration surely will make you think about what are the guidelines that must be followed to get the right choice and combination of shades of a project? Learn about the different factors that will determine the ideal color style for your home, with the help of Liliana Millán, an architect and specialist in the design and integral rehabilitation of homes, offices and tourism ventures.

Houses have different identities that we can help to shape through a certain style. The best atmosphere is generated by architecture, furniture, lighting and accessories. For all these elements to behave as a unit, they must be linked by a color code. For this, to find the ideal color palette, it is necessary to study other variables (apart from our personal taste) much more tangible and measurable, such as natural light, volume, shape and surface of the plant, the typology of the Housing, location or weather.

• • Location and weather. The place where your house is located. A cold climate, where rain predominates, could be compensated with clear environments and warm textures. If you also live in the city, try to brighten the interior with some color.

• • Natural light. Once you start to find the possibility of adding color, the influence of natural light inside comes into play. See if it is intense and constant or on the contrary it is scarce and punctual. Natural light has the property of fanning the colors and shading, or even varying, the shades depending on whether it directly or indirectly affects the surfaces; which can also give different scenes throughout the day. 

• • The white color can even impoverish the space. Therefore, it is convenient to clarify it, for example, with a palette of natural whites, with which you will get the color to be a little more elaborate. You can also do it with washed cakes. That’s why analogs are so important, because without leaving the range, we raise or lower the light intensity through nuances. 

• • Duplicate natural light. Light can also be distributed in the environment through reflection. Use mirrors to increase the flow of light or to transfer images from one space to another.

• • Surface and volume. Finding your color scheme means working first and foremost with a whole idea, in which you have to see how the chosen palette affects the proportions of the environment. In a small space, for example, contrasts between colors are not recommended, because they create a sense of spatial stress, nor do decorative paintings, since they saturate the environment and dwarf it. On the other hand, these aspects also negatively influence the furniture, which would go to the background, practically absorbed by the visual weight of the envelope.

• • Typology and architectural style. The color code can help you break down topics or revalue features that give personality to the space, such as nineteenth-century homes. The decorative details that they usually have can serve to enrich the proposal. Boiseries, high skirting boards or cornices …, if you paint white walls and ceiling, the volume expands and gives more prominence to the floor, hydraulic tiles, pallets, dameros, etc.
    The structure is also a source of inspiration. Use a slab of vaults or joists, wooden or steel pillars to create contrasts. You can also reduce their presence by integrating them into the color of the walls.

There is always a starting point to find the axis of your color scheme. It can be in an upholstery, a painting or some pieces of furniture.

Once all the variables have been analyzed, you can now choose your color code. To begin with, the wall is the one that will take the dominant tonality, which should link all the elements that enter the composition. It follows, in a smaller proportion, the color that you can use in baseboards, moldings and carpentry, which can be contrast or, on the contrary, analogous and more neutral.

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