Top interior design considerations for designing a space – planning your colour scheme

Recently we shared our ideas with you about how to be inspired when designing your living room, with our Living It Up article, covering some of the main design aspects involved.

Continuing on in the spirit of inspiration, throughout October we will be sharing our 10 top design considerations to be used when designing your home.  We will be looking at Colour schemes, wall coverings and finishes, window treatments, flooring, furniture, soft furnishings, accessories, lighting, acoustics and storage.

Over the next month we will be revealing our most important preferences kicking off with how you can plan your colour scheme(s).

Planning Your Colour Scheme

Planning our colour schemes for any room is one of the most important factors if we are to achieve a successful interior design scheme.

In making your design decisions it’s important to pick colours that inspire you and also be aware of how they will react in varied room scenarios I.e. some colours have particular mood enhancing properties or may affect our moods in different ways, for example the use of Lavender or its close relatives is considered to have a calming effect in a room, whilst the colour red can be interpreted as being more dramatic and passionate.  The use of some blues in a room may in some instances cause a less desired effect and may sometimes render a room cold dependent on how much light enters the room.  An additional factor with regards to light sources is the amount of light and type I.e. how much natural day light, position of light falling within a space, how and where light is reflected on surfaces of wall coverings whether paint or wall paper.  Further considerations are having regard to where the sun falls and time during the day in addition to its location during the afternoon and when it sets at night.

(Lighting will be covered in more detail in this series).

Identify furnishings and fabrics to be used within the scheme design first

In choosing your colour scheme it is as equally important to decide on the furnishings that you intend to use within your space at the same time as deciding on your colour choice.  It is always a good idea to take fabric and other samples where possible to enable you to match your colours to complement the furnishings you either intend to buy, have, re-upholstered or existing furnishings that you intend to be part of the scheme.

keeping an overview of the whole project

Whilst planning any design scheme it is necessary to keep an overview of the whole scheme taking into account your design aspirations for other spaces, particularly if you are intending to have a continuation of colours into either an open plan space or are aiming to use a specific accent colour in each space.   However it is best to start your project gradually and finish one room at a time than have your whole environment in chaos.  If you are using an Interior Designer they will have drawn up a schedule of works for what is needed in each project area and when each task is to be done and can work either with you or contractors to ensure that this happens as smoothly as possible on time and to budget.  If you’re intending to do the work yourself it’s probably a good idea to draw up your own schedule of works.

Selecting colours

There a number of ways to choose the colour(s) for your scheme.  Picking colours you see every day and like is probably one of the most easiest ways.  Alternatively you may prefer to refer to a colour wheel for examples of which colours complement each other or clash if this is what your prefer and then incorporate these into your design scheme.

(Examples of colour wheels can be found both on the internet and from most art suppliers).

If you see an object or image with a colour you like, where permitted take a photo of the colour or sample in order for it to be matched.  You can take your samples to most Diy stores such as B & Q and Homebase and other paint outlets who can mix paint colours to give you your best match.  In addition you can use the colour swatches found in Diy stores to have colours mixed to your chosen selection based on Pantone formula guides, which indicate the % of individual colours from the Pantone selection that make up the colour you have selected.  This usually costs a bit more than buying your paint off the shelf, however its worth doing if you wish to tailor your selection to your specific needs. and want your scheme to be a bit more unique.

Similar principles can be applied to wall paper when selecting your colour scheme, see Homebase for some colour scheme ideas using wallpaper.  We will look at this area in more detail when we cover wall coverings.

Next design area in this series

In our next blog in this series we will be looking closer at considerations for wall coverings and will discuss both painting and wallpapering in further detail.

In the meantime be sure to let us know if you would like us to cover other areas of interior design and we’ll try our best to include these in future content.

Until next time……

From Room In A Boxx