Choosing a colour palette for your interiors is hard decision to make. It needs careful thinking to understand the right theme for your house. Here are some tips to select the best interior colour scheme:

1. Style and design of the house

Understand the style of your house before you select any colour scheme. The best tip is to begin from the most formal areas. That would be the entry, the dining room, and the living room. First select a colour scheme for these areas. Then pick a colour from this scheme. For instance, tone down the red sofa (to let’s say… burgundy). This will emphasize the accent in private spaces like bedroom or study room.

2. Internal and external paint colours

If you want to go for a modern look, it is best to select neutral colours that have bold and bright accents. Pastel colours are out of fashion. You can actually choose any colours you want for indoors as well as outdoors, as long as they are well balanced. The best bet is to go for neutral colours and then accentuate them with bold and bright shades. The most famous colours combinations are cream and brown; silver and white; ivory and mocha; charcoal and white; and grey and white.

3. Mood board

A mood board will help you stay focused and come up with creative ideas. It keeps reminding you of the colours that you need so that you don’t end up adding too many colours to your house. To create a mood board, you’ll need some research and patience. You need to order brochures and join some online photo galleries to get ideas. Once your mood board is ready, you can be more focused on what you want as the colour scheme and can visualise it in the space.

4. Existing artwork for selecting colours

To decide the right interior colour scheme and to stay within budget, go through the artwork you already have. Also check out your cushions. Which is the predominant colour in them? Pick out some of the tones from these to use as a base for your paint colours or in accents with rugs and sift furnishings.

Here is some colour advice to help you pick the right colour scheme for your house

• Start with the formal areas of the house and then go to more casual areas.

• Decorate vertically, from dark to light. Use dark colours for floors, medium for walls, and light for ceilings.

• Since most people buy clothes of the colour they think suits them, it’s a good idea to study your clothes’ colour and apply that on walls to see how it goes. If you never wear red, don’t get a red couch.

• Always use the colour wheel. Once you’ve decided a few colours, check the colour wheel to make sure these are not complementary colours.

• As a rule of thumb, don’t select more than three colours. Divide them in 60-30-10.   60% of your room should have the main colour. 30% should have the secondary colour, and the remaining 10% should have the accentuating colour. Walls can have the majority colour. Upholstery’s like cushions and curtains can have the secondary colour and artwork can have the accentuating shades.

If  you would like to learn more about colour schemes and decorating why not book one of my Colour Workshops starting in March 2013. You can then discover how to put a mood board together for your own projects.