Put Color and Personality into Your Apartment

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Put Color and Personality into Your Apartment

aptsherpa · Feb 20, 2006

Colors: they’re a huge part of life, and everyone has a favorite one, but you probably consider size or style over color when decorating. Well, it’s time to reorganize your priorities and move color higher on the list. Color has a huge effect on mood and is a great way to express your individuality. Not only that, color is easier to change than the length of a table or the size of a sofa. Slipcovers, paint, wallpaper, and colorful accents can do wonders to brighten up or change the look of your apartment. Read on to learn what colors best suit you and how you can use them to decorate your home.

What colors do you like?

Numerous color personality quizzes are available online from decorating and home websites like BHG and iVillage. The Dewey Color System is an in-depth way to explore color’s impact on all aspects of your life. Take some tests and see what colors appeal to you most. Your favorite color doesn’t necessarily need to be the center of your decorating scheme. Depending on your color personality, you might want to choose a different color scheme for your home and use your very favorite color only for accents. There’s no need to overburden your home with too much of a good thing, and there’s no wrong answer. Do you like to pair colors that other people think clash? That’s fine; you’re decorating your home, not anyone else’s. Find the colors that most appeal to you and work with them. Don’t lose your head and go too crazy with colors, though. It’s usually best to select one shade as the dominant color for a room, and then choose a few accent colors that match or emphasize the main hue. A color wheel and other color resources can help you see what shades go well with one another.

What can you do with these colors?

General color schemes can focus on a single shade or a palette of related colors. One of the main distinctions used to distinguish color groups is warm or cool, with reds and yellows in the former and blues in the latter. Check out various decorating schemes or tips on using color online, in show homes, and elsewhere, and see what appeals to you most. Keep in mind that you’re decorating your home, not a designer show home, and you need to make choices that will please you, not others. A decorating scheme that follows all the “rulesabout color and decorating may be technically “successful,” but it won’t necessarily please you. Color can be added in a variety of easy ways. If painting a wall is too dramatic, try painting an end table or lamp. Select a throw rug in an eye-popping shade to brighten up your otherwise neutral living room. Appliances come in a variety of colors these days; take advantage of them in order to add interest to your kitchen. If you’re at a loss as to what color to decorate with, consider the existing furniture in the room. Is there a dominant color in these pieces, or a color that could be used to tie them together?

Try it out

Your “favorite” color isn’t necessarily the color you most want to be surrounded with on a daily basis. When planning your color scheme, don’t just think about what looks good on paper. Also consider what rooms have most appealed to you out of all the rooms you’ve been in over the course of your lifetime. Are there any common characteristics or colors that these rooms share? A picture of a room might look great, but being surrounded by the reality of a color is another matter entirely. Take advantage of the color samples offered by decorating stores and take things home. The lighting in your apartment, the arrangement of your furniture, and other factors will have a major influence on how things appear in reality, as opposed to in your decorating fantasy. Rooms that face west will get an orange cast from sunset light; rooms that face east will be brightly lit by morning sunshine. The light bulbs you use also affect whether the light in your home is more yellow or white. Consider all these factors before diving into a color scheme that could be drastically affected by the realities of your home.

Mix it up

If you decorate your entire apartment in one shade, your rooms will match, but your home will be boring. Mix it up by creating different color schemes in different rooms. If your apartment as a whole is rather neutral, spice it up with some colorful accent pieces. And don’t be afraid to move things around—if a table in the living room matches your bedroom’s décor, shift it to the bedroom and think about buying a new piece for the living room. Color is an important element in decorating, but it can’t change the fundamental style of your furniture.

If you’re bold but thoughtful, and you use all available resources, you’ll have no trouble making your apartment more attractive by using color. Break some rules if you want, but follow most of them, and you’ll have a unique but tasteful living environment.

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