Colour Considerations

Colour is the background that should complement the furniture, pictures, books, and accessories that make up your home. Colour can add interest to a room without needing to be outrageously bold. Equally, intense, bright shades can be effective without being overpowering. The key to choosing the right colour for a room is taking into account the various factors that will affect its final appearance.

• Choose colours that match the mood of a room and how and when it's used. Vibrant combinations work best in areas where you don't spend much time - the hallway, for example. Rich red walls may be fine in the evening but could look dark and oppressive by daylight.
• Colour can give a sense of continuity throughout the house. Even if you use different colours to create an individual mood for each room, you could create a visual link by choosing one colour to appear in every room on, say, the skirting boards or even in the furnishings.
• Don't make switches of mood or style too abrupt. Going from Edwardian to Scandinavian to Mediterranean in the same house would make it feel disjointed and small.
• Bold colours can work well in kitchens and bathrooms, but as these rooms tend to have a lot of visual clutter, a simple overall colour scheme will probably work best.
• Choose calming colours, even if they're dark, for the bedroom, which is the first and last thing you see each day.
• Artificial light - especially harsh fluorescent light - can alter colours. Change the lighting or the paint.
• Natural light affects the appearance of a colour. Whitewashed walls, cool and fresh in Mediterranean light, can look flat and dull in the softer light of northern Europe. Light, ice-blue walls might make a north-facing room look chilly but the same colour in a south-facing room will seem airy and bright.
• The size of the painted area affects colour. A small patch of lemon yellow looks fresh and clean, but the same colour on an entire wall will start to look green.
• Pale colours maximise the amount of light in a room. The common-sense conclusion is that you should use light colours in small, dark, or poorly lit rooms and darker colours only in bigger, lighter rooms. However, sometimes it's better to do the opposite and emphasise a room's character, enhancing a large, sunny room with light, bright colours, and making a small, dark area warm and cosy with strong, deep shades.

Types of Finish

As well as the colour, the type of paint finish affects the impression of light in a room.

• Gloss reflects the most light: it's hard on the eyes if used over a large area, but used on relatively small areas it adds sparkle to the overall scheme. It's also the most durable finish, so it's ideal for surfaces that get heavy wear, like skirting boards, window frames, and doors.
• Satin gives a degree of reflection and looks livelier than the matt equivalent of the same shades.
• Matt is the most light-absorbent finish, which makes it a good choice for covering minor imperfections in plasterwork.