Jutta Curatolo: Color Your World- How to Craft the Perfect Mood for Your Home with Paint

White walls are (perhaps ironically) evergreen — always safe, always beautiful, and always in style. That being said, however, you may be missing out on a lot if you keep on repainting every room white year after year! Don’t be afraid of color! A new coat of paint is one of the most inexpensive and effective ways to completely transform a room It can be a fresh, new take on your home and an easy way to make a strong, memorable design statement. Even better, it’s a great place to take risks precisely because you can always repaint!

 

Work to create bold, interesting, but pleasant combinations, and your home will be immediately notable for good taste and elegant style. Color isn’t only about design, though. Like everything that you do in your most personal spaces, color can have a huge effect on your mood and overall outlook when you’re in the room. Which is actually a wonderful thing! By choosing your colors carefully, you can craft the exact tone of each space to elicit the perfect mood for each room in yourself and your guests.

 

The most important rule is to only choose colors that you love. Never mind what’s trendy — always go with what speaks to you on an emotional level. Next, think about the mood you want to create for each room. What activities are likely to happen there? How should each room maker you and your guests feel? Once you know what effect you want each room to create, it’s easy to find the perfect color to make your space beautiful and evocative.

 

Red infuses the room with energy. It’s a great choice for a living room, where you want to stimulate conversation and create a buzz of activity to draw people together. Deeper tones, especially, create a sense of intimacy while brighter tones are more energetic. Red has also been shown to stimulate appetite, making it a smart choice for the dining room — unless you’re on a diet! It’s such a strong color that it creates a bold first impression, making your main gathering area memorable with a touch of creative flare.

 

Yellow is a bright, cheerful breath of fresh air. This peppy color helps to stir up excitement, motivation, and joy, making it a good choice for kitchens, patios, and small spaces like bathrooms and hallways. Be judicious, though — an overload of yellow can take it too far and stir up anxiety or anger.
Green taps into our instinctual love of nature and growing things. It’s a great compromise between the bright cheer of yellow and restful qualities of blue, and is perfect for almost any color in the house. You’ll feel yourself unwinding without getting sleepy, and enjoying a space of tranquility.

 

There’s more! See part 2 for more color inspiration and tips for crafting the perfect mood, as well as the color secret to feeling great about your reflection in the mirror.