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How to Choose a Home Interior Color Palette
How to Choose a Home Interior Color Palette
Choosing a color palette for your home can be a daunting task. Many people feel overwhelmed, unsure of how to combine colors effectively. In this guide, we’ll explore how to choose a home interior color palette that reflects your personal style and creates the desired mood in your space.
Step 1: Understand the Mood You Want to Create
Before you dive into colors, it’s essential to identify the mood you wish to convey in your home. Ask yourself:
- How do I want my space to feel?
- Should it be energizing, calming, or sophisticated?
For a lively and energizing atmosphere, consider vibrant colors like hot pink or bright yellow. Alternatively, if you’re aiming for a serene and tranquil space, opt for soft greens, blues, or neutral tones. Sophisticated environments often benefit from darker shades, like navy or deep purple.
Step 2: Consider Lighting
Lighting significantly impacts how colors appear. Natural light, evening light, and artificial light can all alter your perception of color. For best results:
- Test paint colors in different areas of your home under various lighting conditions.
- Observe how your color choices change throughout the day.
Swatching three colors on your walls allows you to see firsthand how they react to light, ensuring you choose shades that fit your space.
Step 3: Explore Color Temperature
Understanding color temperature is vital for achieving the right balance. Warm colors (reds, yellows) evoke energy and excitement, while cool colors (blues, greens) induce relaxation. A harmonious palette often incorporates both, such as a blend of warm woods with cooler greys.
Step 4: Hues, Tints, Tones, and Shades
Familiarizing yourself with color theory, particularly hues, tints, tones, and shades, can enhance your palette’s depth. A hue is the base color (e.g., blue, green), while a tint is created by adding white, resulting in a lighter version of that color. Conversely, adding black creates a tone, which darkens the color. Gray, a mix of black and white, can soften and desaturate colors, making them more visually appealing.
Step 5: Identify Undertones
Every color has undertones, which can affect how well your chosen colors work together. For instance, a white paint might have subtle yellow or blue undertones, influencing its compatibility with other colors in your palette. When selecting whites or other neutral colors, consider how they relate to your existing decor and flooring to ensure a cohesive look.
Step 6: Find Inspiration
Look for inspiration to kickstart your color palette creation. This could be a favorite painting, wallpaper, or fabric that resonates with you. Pull out the colors you love from these sources and use them to develop a more extensive palette.
For example, if you have a wallpaper sample with various shades of green, explore tints and tones of green for your walls, and consider other colors present in the wallpaper, such as terracotta or soft yellows, for accessories and accents.
Step 7: Use Digital Tools
If physical samples aren’t your style, digital tools can help create a mood board. Platforms like Milanote and color picker tools allow you to collect and visualize potential colors digitally, making it easier to see how they interact with one another.
Final Thoughts
Choosing a color palette for your home doesn’t have to be intimidating. By understanding the mood you want to create, considering lighting, exploring color temperatures, and gathering inspiration, you can develop a sophisticated and harmonious color scheme. Embrace the process, and have fun creating a space that truly reflects you!
Well done! This was sooo informative and yet entertaining! Cheers!
Love your videos!!
What’s your opinion about painting the ceiling the wall’s colour if your walls are only 8 feet ? Will it feel like a cave?
14:15 thank you for this!
Color temperature… I always warn against cool white walls for people who want white, because I noticed how the shadows are so grey. Brrrr.
We recently moved into the last apartment we'll rent before buying our own home in a couple of years. We've started buying high quality, long-lasting decor items that'll be cohesive with the style we want our forever home to have. As of right now, it's… rough. But, I know one day it'll be worth it!
Really liked the content
Another tip to extract a color pallet from your favorite images is to load the image in photoshop (or one of the free replacement apps) and export it to PNG. Then, in the export options choose how many colors you want to export it in, usually 3-5 colors should give you enough to work with and the program will show you the average sum of those colors. That always results in a beautiful matched pallet from the image!
The way these colors blend together is just beautiful! They completely transform the space into a cozy and stylish retreat. I’d love to hear your thoughts on my latest video!
But color room flow theory for the whole house please.
Loved this video, thankyou!
Would you reccomend not mixing warm and cool undertones in a space?? I have a super cool grey kitchen and cool dark grey floors but alot of my favourite tones are warmer. It feels a bit clinical just picking the cooler tones. 🙃
i love your channel
I think it almost makes kinda sense.
This was really good. I kinda knew these things but didn't know what to do with everything in practice.
I love the advice that Sarah Richardson gave once about needing very little of a marmite colour/a colour almost everyone has a strong opinion about (either positive or negative) in a room for it to read that colour because people who love it will see all those bits first and people who hate it will, too. She did a gorgeous pink living room with a neutral sofa, neutral chairs, neutral walls, dark wood floors and a neutral rug and only brought in two stools with pink-striped fabric, a few pink throw pillows in various patterns, and a couple of small pink accessories and yet the room reads pink. It’s so beautifully restrained.
Fantastic video — Thank you for explaining the undertones regarding white paint. I plan to have my house painted in April 2025. My house is very small (965 sq ft). My living room and dining room are next to each other (it is an open space area). I learned a lot from your excellent video. I don't know if I should pain my dining room area a different color or the same color as my living room. I will likely paint it the same because I want to maintain warm tones in these areas.
I'm learning this to build my own house, thank you so much.
In Minecraft, 😅
Any advice for painting a bedroom for a house we will be selling in a few years? Warm medium l/dark wood floors.
Learning!
I used the brown, rust, and beige colors from my African baskets for my bedroom. I like the combination (chocolate brown is my favorite color – yes, I know I’m weird). The only problem is that the beige has a slightly pinkish undertone. When I repaint, I’ll use more of a wheat color.
Thanks to you, Nick, I'm no longer a member of Amateur Hour 😄😄😄
Omg how I couldn’t see anyone commenting about that lamp? Nick where is that lamp from? It’s so beautiful!!
THANK YOU SO MUCH. I was needing this video badly haha
Your follow up sincere commentary when you make broad statements is hilariously refreshing and appreciated. 😂
As a fine arts person you do an amazing job
This is a great video, very clear and explained so much. Loved it ! I’m struggling with creating a color palette using whites and greys with some natural wood … any tips ? 😊
As newbie to interior decorating, this video was very helpful in explaining the theories and practical design aspects of color picking. Thank your for sharing
Hey amateur hour😅😅😅
This is fantastic advice for designing a room! Where I have difficulty applying it is the reality that different rooms will need to have different moods in even a small home. How does one choose different palettes for each room in a way that the whole thing will be cohesive?
How to style hallways would be a great video.
Nick, I’d love to see a video about using color and other wall treatments to define spaces and create interest in an open floor plan that shares large walls between spaces. A “shotgun” style interior comes to mind.
OMG. You did a fantastic job explaining this extremely complex topic into something we can comprehend and apply to our everyday spaces. Thanks so much for making this video.
Hello from Uzbekistan
I get the colour palette but I don't understand how to incorporate organic materials into the pallet..
e.g. for your example, do you choose dark hard wood floors or light hardwood floors etc, a dark or light wood cabinet etc.
Do I go with black or white, beige, silver or grey for appliances etc
Haircut on fleek, Pyjama also.
I am in love with the wallpaper sample. Please let me know what it is?
My fav combo is sage green with lavender and throwing in some alt shades for fun
fantastic video!Thanks!
This was really informative! Thank you for this.
I just really enjoy watching the way you talk, Nick! Yes it's fast, but I love it! Thanks Nick for always making my day <3
As someone with renovated an entire 1500 sq ft house over the last four years, here is a tip I used to help narrow down paint colors. Sometimes when you’re at Lowe’s or Home Depot and every color just looks so similar, I grab whatever the Ultra White (purest of the white) paint swatch is and place it under the colors I’m deciding between. This has helped me SO MUCH in figuring out undertones, temperatures and even how vastly different the colors genuinely look. Then I can narrow down to my top 3 and buy those samples to place on walls in my house to observe what happens with the natural and artificial light in my own home. Hope this helps someone!
Thank you Nick! Colours has always been my biggest challenge, I am learning lots listening to you!
Could you help us whether we should use a RYB or RBG colour wheel. I find this super confusing. I have a beautiful yellow chair – is the complementary colour blue or purple??
I like red, grey, and brown. Red leather, sedona red stain wood. Grey concrete, grey stone, grey iron, grey stained wood. Brown leather and natural wood.
Thank you for explaining the color palette.
Choosing a white color for a wall, to go with the existing trim color, for a house I bought actually gave me a headache once. Finally, I found a color chip that sort of matched the trim and told the guy at the paint store to just keep pumping white into it. I think we pumped a lot of white into it on three occasions and it came out nearly perfect. I really like the idea of taking wallpaper, ornate rugs, or digital images better than the pallets I used to pick up at the store. I do think you missed functionality here. The advice, though very current and practical comes off as… use any of these methods, create a pallet, paint, buy all new furniture, have some upholstered, accents, rugs (and the list never seems to end) and $100,000 later you'll have a great looking room. I don't know how your life has been going but I've never been down that road. I have to take a lot of what I own, cherish, is functional, and comfortable, and make it all work. The style of the house dictates a lot too. It's like a puzzle, it's fun when it all comes together. The best part is that painting is the least expensive thing you can do. I've made ugly countertops and tiles disappear for $25 with an alternate color on a color pallet. Great video, thanks
Where did he get the inspiration for the colors in that soul sucking room, he's in. Was there a sale at Beige World paint and furniture. Is this based on 1960's Soviet Union Architectual Digest.
is it just me or is the whole video blurry? 😕
One of the best videos in explaining colour palettes. Kudos Nick!
I need a white with umber and ocher undertones…pray for me. 😂