AT HOME WITH COLOR
Color. It can make your home cozy or elegant, cheerful, relaxing, energizing or calming. Color helps give your home charm and personality. Fortunately, color is also a relatively fast and inexpensive way to make your home truly “yours.”
That said, choosing color can also be daunting. On this site, you’ll find inspiration and guidance to use color in your home with confidence, and tips that make using color and redecorating affordable, planet-friendly and timeless. No chasing the latest trends here! Because the right colors for your home are the colors that make you happy!
Have fun, and check back often – new examples, sections and tips coming soon!
NEUTRAL PLUS COLOR
Use color to bring new life or a different vibe to a neutral environment. No need to paint the walls or buy a new sofa – just accessorize while sticking to a color theme!
DRESSING UP A NEUTRAL CORNER
Let’s transform this neutral corner – beige sofa and ivory walls – simply by adding a few items in different color schemes.
BLUE
BLUE and GOLD
BLUE and ORANGE
ORANGE and GOLD
GREEN and GOLD
GOLD
RED and BLACK
GREEN
GREEN and PURPLE
GREEN and ORANGE
NATURALS and BROWN
NATURALS
BROWN and ORANGE
YELLOW ORANGE RED
HOW TO
Inspired to redecorate your neutral corner or room? Here are two questions to get you started:
- What colors do you like?
- What items do you already own and love? What could you use in a new, color-coordinated decor?
Take a look around your place – your favorite patterned throw pillow, that beloved vase from your grandmother, or the special painting or ceramics you brought back from a vacation can all be starting points for finding a color theme and for redecorating. Then look in your home for other things in your chosen color or colors, or see what you find elsewhere. Second hand stores can be fantastic sources for unique and affordable items. Find hand-made items at Etsy, new treasures at boutiques with ethnic wares, or be surprised by what you may find at stores like World Market, Pier 1 or even Ross and TJ Maxx.
CHANGING WITH THE SEASONS
My friend Stephanie in Germany does a fabulous job changing her place with the seasons. As the natural world changes, she dresses up her neutral living room with seasonal colors and accessories – and creates a whole different look every few months. Stephanie calls her little rental apartment in a quaint town by the River Rhine “a bit shabby and worn out” – I see charm, warmth and impressive variability!
Here is Stephanie’s current fall decor and last year’s winter and Christmas decoration.
For fall, she dresses up the white sofa and other white or wood furniture with orange, yellow and green pillows and accessories, including a woven table cloth, wood bowl, pumpkins and flower pots to go with the theme. Note the chandelier with warm yellow candles and the “fall foliage” draped around its arms.
In winter, lots of red warms the space – with red slip covers, flower pots and candles. Natural brown and wood in the shape of holiday decoration, moose plushies and throw pillows makes her living room cozy and brings the holidays to life in German and Scandinavian traditions.
I can’t wait to see Stephanie’s spring and summer decor and add more photos to this collection!
Photo: Stephanie Hank
Photo: Stephanie Hank
Photo: Stephanie Hank
BEFORE AND AFTER
BEDROOM MAKEOVER
Our bedroom needed to grow up, and I wanted to make it warmer and more inviting – without breaking the bank.
See how a cobbled-together bedroom with a blue-based tropical theme transformed into an appealing haven with a cohesive look, classy orange-natural-gold color scheme and relaxed bohemian vibes.
AFTER
BEFORE
AFTER
BEFORE
AFTER
BEFORE
HOW TO
FIND A COLOR SCHEME
To arrive at my color scheme, I played with different items and colors, on the bed that I had covered with a neutral blanket to create a blank canvas. I chose a combination of orange, natural, wood and gold – it promised a good mix of warmth and energy while still feeling calm, with plenty of options to make the room interesting and fun.
CHOOSE WALL COLOR AND PAINT
The big decision: What color to paint the walls? A bedroom has several large surfaces for color, including the walls, the bed, and window treatments. I was between two basic choices: Either paint the walls a warm white and bring in orange with a bed spread, curtains and/or other accessories, or paint the walls orange and use mostly natural on the other surfaces. Last not least because I couldn’t find any orange bed spreads I liked, I decided on orange walls.
After bringing home many paint swatches and holding them to different parts of the walls under changing lighting and at different times of the day, I decided on Behr’s Japanese Koi. The color works well in this relatively dark room that gets little direct sunlight. Depending on the lighting and time of day, it takes on any shade from an earthy orange to a velvety orange-red, but it’s always beautiful.
Then, of course, came the hard work of prepping and painting the room – and the joy of seeing it change before your eyes!
FURNISH AND DECORATE – REUSE REUSE REUSE!
To be gentle on my wallet and the planet, I reused and upgraded what I already had whenever possible.
I am particular excited about my bed header: It used to be a window treatment – folded woven wood shades, strings and hardware removed, turned upside down and nailed to the wall.
I covered the original white platform bed with a natural white bed spread from Ikea and partially layered a smaller, handmade blanket from India on top, finally putting this gift to good use. While this blanket, with its yellow and blue tones, did not strictly fit my color scheme, it’s close enough and does not clash with the rest of the room.
A bed offers a large surface area, and how you cover and decorate it will have a great impact on the room. To arrive at my bed decor, I experimented with different ways to cover the bed: All white/natural – boring. All velvety red – rich and interesting, but too dark and heavy for what I was going for. Natural plus a woven, colorful shawl – yes, that could work! But I preferred the larger, lighter colored Indian blanket, and the shawl ended up on the dresser.
The big learning here is: Rather than hunting for that perfect bed spread and paying a lot of money for it, try covering your bed with a large, mono-chromatic blanket and layer some smaller textile on it for interest and a unique look.
Bland and boring
Too dark and heavy
Maybe – nice option!
The old-made-new dresser – and former changing table – can be seen next to the bed in the Before pictures. I spray-painted the blue handles gold (and, while I was at it, some other items as well, like the toy plastic giraffes that since found a place on the bed header). Rather than painting the dresser top, I just covered it with a pretty woven shawl in jewel and gold tones. Gold and orange colored candleholders and hand-made boxes, all gifts or travel souvenirs, add personality.
The trusty Ikea Pax wardrobe got a pair of dark brown doors to replace the old blue ones. New golden door knobs completed the transformation.
The main investments into all-new items were the pair of dark brown wooden nightstands and the bedside lamps (both Wayfair). These pieces really helped pull the room together and give the small, irregular-shaped room some balance and symmetry. The cork lamp shades cast a nice warm glow and reenforce the natural part of the color scheme.
Other new items – affordable finds mostly from Ross – include a dark brown curtain rod and curtains that dress up the window and hide the existing black-out roller shades and view of our neighbor’s entry, the airy laundry hamper made from natural materials, and gold-toned decorative items: the Moroccan inspired small wall mirrors, the gold and mirror mosaic panel, and the whimsical Indian elephants hanging from the ceiling.
Factors that helped this room transformation succeed include:
- Sticking closely to the chosen color scheme
- Complementing the strong orange color with neutral and natural tones and materials
- Repeating elements that tie the room together – like the dark brown wood, naturals and gold and the Moroccan inspired shapes of the mirrors and curtain pattern.
BATHROOM MIRROR TRANSFORMATION
Small, fun and cheap project: Turning our plain, boring and color-less bathroom mirror into a fun object that picks up and reenforces the turquoise and blue accents used elsewhere in the bathroom.
AFTER
BEFORE
HOW TO
The inspiration for this project came from mirrors with a mosaic frame that I had seen in stores, at well over $100.
All I needed to get my “new” mirror – in addition to the plain Ikea mirror we already had – was a pack of glass deco pebbles (find them online or in a store that sells home decoration products) and glue that works for glass and ceramics. The glass pebbles have one flat side by design, so they are easy to glue onto surfaces.
I cleaned the mirror well with alcohol and laid out the pebbles until I liked the design. I used more dark blue pebbles on the bottom and more light colored ones toward the top, to mimic the layers of a body of water that is deeper blue down below (in retrospect, I could have been more explicit with that, but it’s also fun to have the mix of colors). I glued the pebbles on, let it all dry, and voila! I’ve had the mirror up for years now, with no pebbles coming lose.
Much more coming soon!
Stay tuned for:
- Color at the dinner table
- Room/interior wall colors
- House/exterior paint colors
- Color in the world around us
ABOUT
Hi there,
My name is Beate, and I’m happy you stopped by!
I love color, and I love living with color. I started this site because I want to share my love of color and encourage others to be more “at home with color,” too – in both senses: to live in a home made even more comfortable with color, and to be confident choosing and using color.
A bit about me: I was born and raised in Germany and have lived in San Francisco for over 25 years now. I love travel and nature, and I’m always keenly aware of the colors around me: The different shades of green in a lush forest, the vibrant walls of colonial houses in the Yucatan, the elegant hues on Victorian facades here in my home town…
While I have my own color preferences, I am keenly aware that color is a very personal choice – and that’s a wonderful thing. Imagine how boring the world would be if every house were painted the same color! With our diverse preferences in mind, I aim to show as many different examples and color combinations as possible. That said, I will not show you anything I truly dislike – unless, maybe, it’s a good example of how not to use color ;).
What you see here today is just the beginning – I am planning to add much more to this site. So check back soon!
If you have comments, feedback, questions or suggestions, or if you’d like to share your own use of color, let me know via the contact form below. I’d love to hear from you!
Beate
PHOTOS
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CONTACT
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