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Trust Your Senses To Pick The Right Color For Your Home

Posted: 7/6/2011

To select your personal palette, reflect on your senses.

(NAPSI)—The next time you paint your house, close your eyes. The colors you see are the ones that may suit you best.

Instead of staring at the outer walls, concentrate on your inner emotions. The process of choosing paint colors may involve sifting through hundreds of hues, but decorators have discovered the final selections are almost inevitably tied to the homeowner’s emotional connection to a particular color.

Every color has an emotional association, and individuals are drawn to different colors for reasons depending on their distinct personalities. The feelings that stem from the five senses are the best sources to identify meaningful colors best suited for your personality, style and interests. What helps homeowners feel most comfortable and confident with their color choices is recognizing the role your reactions to color play in your home decor.

According to color expert Dee Schlotter, “Color preferences are unique, and choosing a color is a personal exercise.” She believes that the feelings specific colors elicit are a subconscious reaction based on past experiences and associations. “Many times, we’re not even aware of why we like a color or how certain colors, when paired together, make us feel,” adds Schlotter.

Tips On Picking Colors

When choosing colors, basing your decisions on an accent piece that you love, such as a piece of art, can help make the selection process simpler. Consider these tips:

• Work with a few colors. As a general rule, you should assign 60 percent of the available space to one color, called dominant; 30 percent to another, called intermediate; and 10 percent to an accent color. Using too many colors in the same room is likely to create confusion rather than harmony.

• Keep in mind the effects colors may have on your moods. This will help you in deciding which color should be dominant, intermediate and accent.

• Determine the elements of your decor that you don’t intend to change, such as the floor, for example. Be sure their colors will blend nicely in your scheme.

To find the personal color palettes that reflect your personality, you can try the online color tools available at the PPG Pittsburgh Paints The Voice of Color website at www.voiceofcolor.com. There, you can also find the free Color Sense Game to help you determine your emotional connections to various objects, so you can select a color palette that’s right for you.

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