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Home > Colour SchemesYou’ve spring-cleaned, you’re shattered, and you now realise that the magnolia wall in your dining room is actually supposed to be white. Of course you could just bluff it out – “It’s supposed to be that colour, it’s classic crème isn’t it? I can’t remember exactly.” – you know the type of thing. Chances are though that your Sapphic sweetheart just isn’t willing to let it ride. Procrastination will not win you any favours, you have to face facts, it’s time to decorate. Now, we don’t want to cast aspersions on every heterosexual couple in the world, but it just so happens that every straight couple we know follows this same pattern: They make a decision to decorate (we say ‘they’ but we all know it is Her that has made it); they decide how they want their room (again, there is no ‘they’ about it – it is Her); and then of course they decorate it (it is very often Him that does this bit, with ‘direction’ from Her). When you happen to have two Hers in a home though things can get a bit fraught. Two Hers tends to mean two very definite ideas about how a room should look. If you’re lucky those ideas will be very similar and your decorating experience is likely to be a harmonious one. If you’re not though, the decorating duel is about to begin and colour is often one of the very first points of contention. With this firmly in mind, we thought we would try to shed a little light on the subject for you. There is of course a theory for everything and colour is no different. Colour theory we have found is a set of principles that can be used to create harmonious colour combinations. Colour psychology on the other hand, explores and attributes meaning to colour. The required outcome of our decorating duel is not only to find a colour scheme that looks good in our home, but one that also appeals to both of our Sapphic sensibilities. Colour Theory The search for a harmonious colour scheme is significantly helped by the use of a colour wheel. The wheel offers a visual representation of colour relationships based on the three primary colours of red, blue and yellow. The next time you see Linda Barker and the likes on TV ‘casually’ throwing colours together that you would NEVER have linked, believe us, it’s the colour wheel that’s working for them – there is no casual about it! Colours work in harmony when they are chosen with the wheel very much in mind. For example a triadic colour scheme will make use of 3 colours that are equally spaced around the colour wheel. Complementary colours are those that lie directly opposite each other on the wheel.  It all sounds very theoretical and not very practical in every day life but it does actually work! You don’t have to take forever to work it out though, check out www.color-wheel-pro.com. This site has a free downloadable piece of software that lets you see colour theory in action. Colour theory is based on pure colours, i.e. the hues (the quality that differentiates one colour from another, for example yellow from green). Once you’ve found colours whose relationships work well together you can then throw tints, tones and shades into the mix too. A tint is where white is added to any hue (or colour for us non-colour-theorists!). A tone is when grey is added to a hue. A shade is when black is added to a hue. So if triadic, complementary, analogous, split-complementary and tetradic colour schemes are just a step beyond for you, consider the monochromatic colour scheme. This is where you decide on a single colour (no relationships to worry about here other than your own!) and your variations are achieved then through adding your tints, tones or shades to that one colour, it’s simple, it’s soothing and it’s virtually fool-proof. Colour Psychology How we react to different colours is down to psychology, for like it or not, colours do have a psychological effect on us. Johann Goethe pioneered the study of colours and their effect on us. He found that blue for example gives us a feeling of coolness and yellow tends to have a warming effect. Colour psychology has come a long way since Goethe’s time of course and it is now big business. In our consumerist age for example, the colours of company logos and product packaging will have been chosen with customers’ psyches very much in mind. The same basic principles of colour psychology though can be applied to the colour schemes for your home. Painting a room bright red for instance psychologically warms us up – we associate red with flames, heat and fire, but mixing it with other colours changes the feel immediately. It can look innocent for example with white if you like the retro gingham-check-feel; mix it with brown for a more comforting ambience. The trick to successful colour design is managing to mix both the colour theory with the psychology. Cool blues for example can be made to feel warmer when married with warm yellows and oranges. Some food for thought; we came up with these colour associations – what are yours?
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"The required outcome of our decorating duel is not only to find a colour scheme that looks good in our home, but one that also appeals to both of our Sapphic sensibilities."
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