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Fresh Design Ideas

Have Fun With Color

Your choice of a color scheme holds an important place in the design plan for a room. The colors you choose for each room will convey its overall look, mood, and formality. The color scheme should be carried out in wall, floor, and ceiling paint or coverings, in window and furniture fabrics, and in permanent and temporary decorative items. The presence and tones of wood finishes also must be considered.

What Mood Do You Want The Room to Convey?
· Color families are either warm or cool. Cool colors, blue, green, and violet, will create a serene, quiet, relaxing mood. Warm colors, red, orange, and yellow, will give a cozy, cheerful, comfortable feeling. Muting warm tones will always cool them down.
· The texture of the underlying surfaces will affect the color and, therefore, the mood. Smooth textures are cooler; they reflect light and always make colors appear lighter. Rough surfaces are warmer; they absorb the light and make colors appear darker.
· Dark colors on walls and ceilings create a sense that they are closer and light colors will make them seem to recede. As you choose a particular color, you must also be aware that your chosen color will be influenced significantly by the colors that are adjacent to it in the room.

Before

How Is A Full Color Scheme Chosen?
· Begin by working with some color already in the room or a fabric or item previously determined to be in the room. If the colors already in the room are part of a multi-colored fabric, use these colors as the basis for the scheme, employing the less prominent colors in the fabric as accent colors. Even if an existing fabric isn't something you need to use as a foundation, a patterned fabric containing a range of colors is an excellent basis for the overall scheme.
· Two or more colors in the same color mood can be used in the scheme, but only one should be dominant.
· Minor accent colors can also be chosen from opposite mood colors if all colors are used in muted tones.
· A monochromatic scheme can be achieved when a single color is used as both the major color and as the accents. In cases of monochromatic schemes, a range of shades, tones, and tints of the color should be utilized to add interest.
· Select the patterns to be used in the room first and work from them. It is always much easier to change solid colors, whether fabric, carpet, or wall color, than patterned colors.

The most important thing to keep in mind when developing your color scheme is to have fun with it. Let yourself be creative with your color choices. Trust your own judgment and you will be happy with your color choices.

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