Out with the Old: Color Fun

As you would have realised if you are doing a traditional renovation on your home … creating a whole new look for your most significant investment involves a little more than just choosing new doorknobs! (Although, of course, that is the most important part!). The second decision you’ll have to make when doing a traditional renovation, after the lever handles versus door knobs conundrum, is what color scheme you’ll have in your home. Here we look at some general guidelines and some inspiration for period style homes.

One of the first things you need to consider when you are looking at repainting your traditional style home is the colour wheel. This is in use by every interior designer on the planet, and is an essential guide to color schemes - not just colors. It is shown on the right side graph below.

It may not make much sense at the moment, but the heel basically show the position of different colors in relation to each other. The smaller wheels around the sides show different ways to create colour schemes - you can have a complementary, a triadic, a monochromatic, or an analogous theme for your home. Really, you can have anything you like … but if you want it to look good, them’s the breaks!

Another thing you’ll need to consider is the interaction of the color scheme you choose with the overall

personality of your house. A Tudor style house will look good in deep browns and mossy greens - think about the types of dye that were available in the period that you are modeling your home on. We can create any colour of the spectrum for your paint nowadays, but back in the day, dyes and pigments were based on things like iron ore, ochre, clays, and plant materials. And yes, this was only a couple of hundred years ago … not when people lived in caves and ate berries through their noses! The best way to check out the dyes and colours that were available in the period your are remodeling your home on is just by looking at pictures

from that time - something you have probably already done plenty of! You can also check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dye

Consider also how your door hardware colors will interact with your paint colours - brass obviously belongs

with the yellow group of colours on the wheel, while nickel and silver belong with the grey area. Almost all of the hardware on the site is available in at least one variant of yellow versus grey colours - so there is no excuse for having badly matched door knobs! If you have had a look around recently, you might have also noticed some deliciously colorful glass knobs from Verreries de Brehat … they have something to suit every different shade of paint!

Monochromatic schemes will be one of the top picks for many of you, whether you are doing a traditional renovation or a modern one. The colours you use will be different, of course … and the inspiration you find will come from widely different sources. You might look at doing black and white or orange and white in a modern home (remembering that you can always use different shades or saturations of the same color - you are not stuck with just two paint cans!). In an older home, you might use tan and green, or tan and a deeper brown, or something like red and silver-clay. One of the best ways to find a colour scheme is to steal one … sort of! If you take inspiration form one source it is copying, take inspiration from many and it is research. This is an iron clad rule of writing, that also holds true for interior decorating!

And above all … enjoy your forays into traditional and modern colour schemes for your home! They are one of the most personal and striking elements of your home.

Photo credits: Cobalt’s Color Directory by cobalt123



One Response to “Out with the Old: Color Fun”

1. Keeping Up With The Jones – First Impressions :: Knockin on History’s Door says:

   16 October 2008 at 9:11 am

   [...] can choose the colour of your front door based on the colour wheel – you might have seen this in science class, way back when you wore your hair in pigtails or a [...]