It is very rare to have the situation of a blank canvas of a house to decorate and style; usually, our homes have inherited features and styles that your budget must work with to create our own oasis. However, if you are forward-thinking and plan in advance, this is not a problem, and you can develop and change your home organically.
Professional interior designers are armed with the style weapons of their industry: mood boards and colour wheels. You too can use these professional tools to help realise your interior dreams – do not be daunted by them.
Room by room, have a look around and see what colours your main furniture and accessories are. Using strong cardboard attach samples of the fabrics or examples of the colours that dominate each room – have a different board for each room. Use the colour wheel to see what colours go with the dominant colour.
Tonal
Use just one colour but vary tones throughout.
Harmonious
Use colours that are near to each other on the colour wheel. Harmonious colours provide a sense of tranquillity and are easy to live with.
Complementary
Use colours that are opposite each other on the colour wheel. This is a little more daring and the impact more immediate; add accents of colour with your accessories for a more low-key effect.
Once you have created your mood boards with the colours of your furniture and accessories you can concentrate on choosing colours for the walls and floors. By using your mood boards and the colour wheel, you can coordinate and calculate the flow of colours throughout the house. Larger houses can get away with greater variations of colour more than smaller abodes, but by seeing the mood boards together, you can see the overall effect of your choices for the house as a whole.
If you choose wallpaper for one room, you can easily pick out a shade of paint for the adjoining room that works with it, or use the background colour of the wallpaper for the next room. The trick is to unify the colours throughout your home. You can also do this by keeping the colour of your woodwork and ceilings the same throughout the house. Another way to provide continuity of theme is to have the same colour carpet throughout. This can potentially be a big hit on your budget, but there are plenty of discounted carpets that can provide you with your choice of carpet at a very reasonable price.
When choosing your carpet type, take into consideration the traffic that the carpet will be experiencing (a stain-resistant carpet could be more appropriate if you have children and pets), the natural light of the rooms, and the colour of any curtains you have. By choosing classic neutral colours rather than on-trend tones, you are allowing yourself the future opportunity to easily change your colour scheme by redecorating the walls and changing accessories without the necessity to change your carpets.
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