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Have you ever stepped into a room and sensed that something just didn’t quite click with the decor? Perhaps the colors clashed or felt out of place.
It doesn’t matter that the space is adorned with expensive, stunning furniture, accessories, or lighting. If the colors don’t harmoniously relate well, the décor will not be as aesthetically pleasing as it should be.
Thus, before designing and decorating your space, it’s important to understand the relationship between colors and how to mix them. Without this foundational knowledge, you risk detracting from the desired balance.
To create a splendid, tasteful, and harmonious space, you need to add the theory of color and color harmony to your knowledge. Let’s explore the details of each below.
Unraveling Color Theory To Achieve Harmony In Interior Spaces
Color theory is all about mixing colors using the color wheel. When you understand how colors interact, you can combine them to create a harmonious space. That is the reason interior designers and decorators depend on the color wheel.
The color wheel is a circle with colors arranged in a special order based on how they relate to each other. It has 12 main colors: three primary colors, three secondary colors, and six tertiary colors.
It’s a tool that can help you combine colors for aesthetically pleasing and harmonious decor.
Exploring Primary, Secondary, And Tertiary Colors
Primary colors are the foundation from which all other colors are derived. They include red, yellow, and blue. When primary colors are mixed, they produce secondary colors. Therefore, when you combine red and yellow, you get orange. Yellow and blue produce green, while mixing red and blue creates purple.
Moreover, mixing one primary color with one secondary color produces a tertiary color. There’s a total of six tertiary colors in the color wheel. They include magenta (red and purple), vermillion (red and orange), amber (yellow and orange), chartreuse (yellow and green), violet (blue and purple), and Teal (blue and green).
Despite having 12 colors on the color wheel, you have undoubtedly come across many more colors than these. This is because, each distinct color has varying amounts of hues, tints, shades, or tones.
Demystifying Hues, Tints, Shades, And Tones
A hue is a pure color without white, grey, or black, and neither does it have any other color mixed with it. The hues are the primary and secondary colors.
Adding white to a pure hue produces a lighter version known as a tint, resulting in a lighter color than the original hue. For example, when you add white to a blue hue, the outcome is a sky-blue tint.
Shade is a hue or mixture of pure colors to which black is added to make it darker. The more you add black, the darker it appears. For example, when you add black to blue, the result is a shade of blue called navy blue.
The tone is a hue, or mixture of pure colors to which pure gray is added. For instance, when you mix blue and gray, you get blue-gray. Increasing the amount of white in gray produces a lighter tone while adding more black to gray results in a darker tone.
Understanding The Color Harmonies To Enhance Your Space
One of the ways to achieve color harmony is by combining colors that relate well with each other. Hence, understanding the theory of color harmonies helps you to create color schemes to aesthetically decorate your space.
Let’s explore each in detail.
Creating Harmony With A Complementary Color Scheme
Complementary colors are positioned on opposite sides of the color wheel. For instance, red complements green, yellow complements purple, and orange complements blue. However, this does not mean they cannot create a harmonious look. It depends on how you arrange the colors together.
According to the color theory, one important rule to observe when using complementary colors is that you should not use equal amounts in a space. That’s because the two colors will compete for your attention, canceling each other out. So, if you choose to use a complementary color scheme, you are advised to observe some precautions before using it.
For instance, if you paint your kitchen walls red, and a contrasting color such as green on the cabinets, the two colors will clash and fight for your attention. In this situation, muted tones of red and green colors will create a subtler space.
Complementary colors can work anywhere including your dining area. A wonderful example is combining bluish chairs and an orangish floor against a neutral background. The tones or tints you use depend on the overall color scheme.
Thus, experiment with different shades of your preferred color until you strike the right balance.
Split Complementary Colour Harmony
Moving beyond the traditional complementary color scheme, the split-complementary color scheme offers an additional color. So, instead of the usual two colors, it now has three colors. Achieving this color scheme entails mixing one color with two colors that are adjacent to its complement.
While complementary colors create a strong visual contrast, a split-complementary color scheme provides a subdued contrast. If you are a beginner, experts recommend starting with this color scheme as it’s easy to create color harmony.
As an illustration, take the color orange. To form a split-complementary palette, you must incorporate blue-purple and blue-green.
In essence, there are 12 basic split-complementary color schemes that you can explore. A few examples include:
- Yellow + Blue-Purple + Red-Purple
- Blue + Red-Orange + Yellow-Orange
- Blue-green + Orange + Red
Even though split-complementary colors are easier to work with, also on this scheme, you need to take some precautions. It will prevent you from creating a space that appears busy instead of harmonious. First, you need to identify the most dominant color.
For instance, if you have yellow, blue-purple, and red-purple, the latter colors are more dominant over yellow. Therefore, consider using more of these two colors than yellow.
For example, if you are painting a room, consider painting one side blue-purple and another red-purple. Use yellow as an accent color on the wall’s trim, or wall hangings.
Another example is when you plan to decorate your living room using a split-complimentary color scheme of blue, red-orange, and yellow-orange.
For this, consider incorporating orange sofas and complementing them with a blue area rug and blue cushions. As for yellow, use it as an accent – a yellow vase, ashtray, or earthenware with yellow highlights.
To try out this color scheme, you may consider getting sofas in orange. Then, add blue-green and red cushions. To finish the look, find a carpet with the same red color as the cushions mixed with a neutral color.
Exploring Harmony With Analogous Colors
Analogous colors, sit side by side on the color wheel. It doesn’t matter which end you are using, as long as the colors are adjacent on the color wheel, they are analogous colors.
In an analogous color harmony, there’s one main color, often a primary or secondary one, along with a supporting color, usually a secondary or tertiary one. Lastly, it has a third color, a mix of the first two colors.
An example of an analogous color scheme includes yellow, chartreuse, and green. A combination of red, vermillion, and orange is another combination, and so is blue, teal, and violet.
These three color combinations share a common hue. To create a cohesive and unified effect, many designers employ the 60-30-10 guideline to create a visually pleasing balance. Hence, 60% of your space should comprise the base color, 30% an accent color, and 10% a pop color.
Here is an example of the areas where you can apply an analogous color scheme like blue, teal, and violet.
- 60% blue on walls, area rugs, and large furniture.
- 30% of teal on accent chairs, bedding, and rugs.
- 10% of violet on throw cushions, pillows, art, and accessories.
You can’t go wrong with the 60-30-10 rule. Simply put, it allows you to create a color scheme more easily, helping you achieve harmony in your space.
To illustrate further, you can have a bedroom with a blue bed, green-blue quilt, green-blue wall decorations, and light green pillows.
Monochrome Harmony
A monochromatic color scheme usually creates a calm, subtle, and serene atmosphere built around a single color. It is created by employing one single color and varying it through tints, shades, and tones.
Traditionally, it’s normally created using one of the 12 base colors on the color wheel and choosing any variations of that base. For example, you can choose a warm base color (red side of the color wheel) or a cool base color (green side of the wheel).
However, remember to incorporate different saturations of that particular color for a cohesive and harmonious space. A highly saturated color is considered more intense, appearing more vivid and bold. In contrast, a less intense color appears dull.
An excellent illustration of a monochromatic color scheme is a kitchen with sage green walls, olive green cabinets, and mint green plants.
For the living room, you can feature sage green walls paired with olive green sofas, and enhance the ambiance, by adding accent pillows and throws in lighter green hues like mint green or pistachio. All the while, ensure consistency as you work towards achieving harmony in your space as you use the same color family.
Triadic Color Scheme
Triadic color harmonies use three colors evenly spaced from each other on the color wheel. Hence, there will always be three colors between each color on the triadic color scheme. When you join these colors on the color wheel, they form a triangle.
Each triangle is formed exclusively with either primary colors, secondary colors, or tertiary colors. You can never combine them. The following are examples of triadic color combinations:
- Red, Yellow, and Blue (Primary colors)
- Green, Orange, Purple (Secondary colors)
- Yellow-orange, Red-violet, Blue-green (Tertiary colors)
A triadic palette has a strong contrast, making the décor appear dramatic. But you can tone down your space by using subdued shades.
You also don’t have to use the colors equally. You can use the common 60-30-10 rule in your application by deciding the dominant color. Next, identify the color that takes a secondary role and the last one, which you can use as an accent color.
An example of a triadic color palette is a blue sofa, orange rug, orange pillows, and green plants. Alternatively, you can have blue-green walls in your bedroom. Match that with a yellow-orange sofa adorning blue-green and red-violet pillows. Incorporate the same color of pillows on the bed.
Tetradic Color Harmony
The tetradic color palette has four colors. When you place a rectangle on the color wheel, the colors on each of the four corners are the colors that make up a tetradic color scheme.
In other words, this color scheme comprises two sets of complementary pairs of colors that sit opposite each other on the color wheel. It has two primary and two secondary colors or four tertiary colors.
The following are two examples of this color scheme:
- Red, Green, Purple, and Yellow
- Blue-Green, Red-Orange, Yellow-Green and Red-Violet
The tetradic color scheme is a rich color scheme offering a variation, allowing you to be creative. One of the ways you can work with these colors is to identify one dominant color from the four colors, which you’ll use the most. The other colors play a supporting role as accents.
It can be challenging working with these colors, especially if you don’t get the color proportions right. The results can be disastrous. You need not use equal proportions of the colors, as you can overwhelm a space. Instead, tone it down using tints, shades, or tones of these colors.
Another way of using this color scheme is by choosing one main color, one secondary color, and the remaining two colors being of different shades. You can further tone down the colors against a neutral background.
As an illustration, orange walls with blue furniture, a blue rug, and red drapes can be intense. But, you can make it calmer by painting the walls white while maintaining the orange, blue, and red vibrant colors on the furniture, upholstery, and drapes.
An interesting combination you can try in your bedroom is yellowish-green walls, red-orange bedcover, red-violet pillows, and blue-green bedside lamps.
Square Colour Harmony
Like a tetradic one, a square color harmony consists of two pairs of complementary colors and forms a square on the color wheel. It comprises one primary color, one secondary color, and two tertiary colors.
There are two spectrums of color temperature in this color scheme, two colors are warm, while the other two are cool. Hence, you have to balance them well. As always, the 60-30-10 rule helps you to balance the colors, harmonizing the colors, and hence the space.
That means you can choose one color that takes up to 60% of the space. Additionally, identify a secondary color that complements the dominant color and use the two remaining colors as accents.
To illustrate, you can use blue-violet as your dominant color for the walls and yellow-orange as your complementary color for the furniture.
The other two colors in the square color scheme, yellow and purple, can be brought in with throw pillows and a blanket or quilt as accent colors. Other items with which to bring in these two colors include paintings, vases, lamps, and picture frames.
Final Takeaway
As a final takeaway, you can achieve harmony in your interior space by carefully blending colors that work well together. Once you understand the theory of color and the different types of color harmonies, you will be more knowledgeable about creating a harmonious and visually pleasing space.
Whether you prefer bold contrasts or subtle blends, the secret lies in using colors that relate well with each other. To achieve this, do some experiments to develop the best color palette that reflects your personality and style.
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