Choosing a color palette can be difficult enough, but try matching a color palette to a design style!
- Do you want your dream kitchen to be reminiscent of the warmth of Tuscany? Try an earthy palette of ochre, terra cotta and muted olive green.
- Or is French charm more your style? Think of blue and white china as the foundation of this classic combo, especially with pops of sunny yellow.
- Perhaps it’s mid-Century modern instead. Keep your palette predominantly a clean canvas of white with bold primaries for accent.
- Or maybe you’re going for a rustic industrial vibe. Rusty reds and browns will blend nicely with brick, wood, and metal.
- Would you enjoy preparing breakfast in a kitchen that reminds you of a cottage on the beach? Choosing a color palette that includes plenty of white with soft shades of tan and pale blues and greens will help set the mood.
Whatever your style, there’s a palette that will help evoke it.
Design Style? What Style?
When choosing a color palette based on traditional design styles, you can find inspiration in decorating magazines and websites. But what if your current design style is best described as “eclectic”?
Then where do you begin? Rest assured, you do have a style. You just need to refine it. Try these ideas for inspiration:
- Check your closet! What colors speak to you? If you love to wear it, let your home wear it, too!
- Carry your palette from an adjacent room you like. Especially in open-concept plans, it’s essential to keep the palette cohesive. But vary the balance. Reverse your dominant and accent colors to create interest.
- Play off the palette of a rug or piece of artwork that you love. If you don’t trust your own ability to put colors together, trust artists and artisans to know what they’re doing.
I’m Done Choosing a Color Palette—Now What?
Pare down your palette! Unless you’re an expert, your color palette should include no more than three colors. Adding more color than that tends only to add visual clutter. Keeping your palette simple is generally more pleasing to the eye.
If limiting yourself to three colors sounds too restrictive, consider this: given the number of colors on the color wheel, you have an infinite variety to choose from! You can select three contiguous colors or two complementary colors plus a neutral. You can even choose three shades of the same color!
Once you select your palette, you need to figure out which color goes where. The “60-30-10” rule can help you with this decision. Your dominant color covers 60% of the room, followed by 30% in a secondary color with 10% in an accent color.
How It Works
If you’re going for a beach cottage kitchen, here’s how your palette could guide your choices.
- Paint the cabinets white. This is your dominant color or roughly 60% of the room.
- Choose flooring in wood or tile that reminds you of a sandy beach. That’s 30% of your kitchen.
- Use pale blue for an accent. Painting your island or kitchen table in an accent color will make it stand out.
A word of caution: Don’t go overboard with your accent color! This color pops against your backdrop because you use it sparingly.
If you prefer more color, swap out the emphasis. Set off pale blue cabinets with crisp white quartz countertops. Sprinkle in accents in green glass.
Choosing a color palette of three shades still offers you plenty of options to make the palette your own.
Colors to Get Cooking With
Decorating your home so that it reflects who you are can give you a feeling of satisfaction—when it goes well. When it doesn’t, your decorating disaster reminds you daily of your expensive mistakes.
If you’ve suffered too many frustrations and disappointments choosing a color palette on your own, invest in the aid of a professional designer. You want your kitchen to be a place where your family naturally wants to gravitate.
Contact Us
Advice abounds in choosing a color palette. And that advice is helpful. But if you hesitate over choosing the right shade of blue—there are dozens of hues from azure to zaffre—don’t hesitate to enlist LJ’s design team to help you.
LJ Kitchen’s staff is trained in color theory. We are experts in matching a color palette to a design style. Contact Us today if you need help choosing a color palette for your design project. We’ll take the time to determine your style and find the colors you’ll love living with. Let’s get cooking!
Links:
https://www.hgtv.com/design/decorating/color/how-to-choose-a-color-scheme-pictures
https://www.bhg.com/decorating/color/schemes/how-to-pick-a-color-scheme/
https://www.onekingslane.com/live-love-home/decorating-with-color-patrick-mele/