My home was built in the late 70s. The house is a two story, and we live in the upstairs. In the past few months I have been painting the walls. I love color and have chosen to go with a different color in each room. However, I am stumped by one room – the living room. Our living room is my husband’s office, so it has a carpet that is mostly brown and orange with flecks of other colors running through it. This carpet also runs up the stairs and into our hallway, which runs the entire length of our house.
I have painted several of the rooms on this floor with different colors, but they don’t all match with each other or the carpeting, which was put in before we moved in to this house. I have had several people tell me that I need to paint all these rooms white or beige to match the carpeting; however, I don’t want to paint all these rooms white or beige because that would make my house look like an institution!
I recently read an article about how important color is in your home and how you should always use a color standard throughout your house. (I am enclosing this article for you.) But my question is: must all these colors really
Color is one of the most important design elements for your home. It can be a subtle background to your life or it can be the defining element that makes your house stand out from all the others in the neighborhood. If you want to make sure that your home looks great, you need to start paying attention to color.
What do you notice when you walk into a room? The color, right? Color determines whether a space is warm and inviting or cold and sterile. It can evoke emotion or it can just exist in plain sight without making much of an impression at all. Color should never be an afterthought in any home design project but it often is.
The main problem with color is that there are so many options available. Unlike other design elements, such as cabinetry, fixtures or appliances, there is not necessarily a right choice and a wrong choice when it comes to color. You might not like what someone else has chosen but you cannot say that their choices are completely wrong either.
The best way to go about choosing color for your home is to follow some basic guidelines:
Most homeowners use color to create a personal aesthetic and set the mood for their rooms. But what about the people who design those colors?
Color is one of the most important decisions you can make when designing your home. Even choosing neutral colors requires care, since different types of whites, grays and beiges can subtly affect the feel of a room. Because color is so important, designers at Sherwin-Williams follow specific standards to make sure each paint color is consistent no matter where it’s applied.
It all starts with the creation of a “color standard” which defines how a color looks under different lighting conditions. Color standards are created using a special machine called a “spectrophotometer” that precisely measures how much light of each wavelength is reflected off the surface of a paint chip. This information is used to generate an exact “color recipe” for each paint color.
I’m picking up my paintbrush, amping up the color in my home and not looking back. There’s a reason why I didn’t go with a white floor, white cabinets or white walls in my own house. Not only is it boring, but it’s also distracting. It feels cold and sterile. You can’t see the texture in your materials or appreciate their unique qualities.
Yes, I’m biased—I work with color every day—but there are health benefits to living in a colorful home. Color can influence mood; it can evoke emotions and enhance the atmosphere of a space. The right color makes food taste better (think “The Dress”); it can make you happier, healthier and more productive; and studies show that adding color to your workplace improves employee performance by 15 percent. And yet, as far as we have come in terms of design and technology, many architects, builders and designers still use the same old formulas for their homes: basic white for floors, cabinets, counters and walls. It may be easy to choose these finishes, but are they the best choices?
If you want to create an individualized home that reflects your style and personality—and if you want
Let’s talk about color. We’re not talking about the paint on your walls or the fabric on your sofa. We’re talking about that ubiquitous stuff that holds it all together: cement.
As long as you’re living in a world where cement is a part of your life, you may as well make it pretty, right? Let’s talk about colored concrete.
The Basics
Color pigments are used to color the cement paste in concrete, not the aggregate, and are added during the mixing process. The amount of pigment needed depends on the desired color intensity and varies by product type, but generally ranges from 1/2 lb to 3 lb of color per 94-lb bag of cement.
For darker colors, more pigment is needed, and for light tints, much less is needed. Pigments can be purchased separately or as a component of ready-mix concrete.
Perhaps you’re wondering if colored concrete will cost you more than typical gray concrete? In most cases there will be an additional cost (although minimal), since pigment is an added material to the mixing process. However, the exact price will depend on your geographical location and other factors related to the decorative project at hand. But what’s good to know is that you don’t have to break the
The color of your concrete driveway, walkway, patio and pool deck can make or break your homes curb appeal. Unlike paint, which can be changed with a weekend trip to the home improvement store, concrete is a permanent installation. And because it is so large, it will overwhelm other elements in your yard or on the exterior of your home and become the most dominant visual feature.
For that reason, it’s crucial to think about color when designing your project. If you are working with an architect or landscape designer on an outdoor project, ask them to include a rendering of the space that highlights the color of the concrete. This can help you visualize what the final product will look like and give you a chance to get creative with color and pattern.
When considering color for your next concrete project, here are some things to keep in mind:
“I can’t see colour.” This phrase is often uttered by someone who is colour deficient or colour blind. They have a perception problem; they cannot distinguish between blues and greens, and they may have difficulty identifying reds, yellows and oranges. What they are saying is that they cannot differentiate one colour from another. However, when I hear this phrase, I understand it to mean something else: “I don’t get colour.”
The ability to differentiate colours is important in many different fields of work including science and medicine. If you are a carpenter or electrician and you need to match a wood stain or identify an electrical wire, then the ability to differentiate colours is vital. But what about the rest of us? Colour plays a major role in our everyday lives; it influences our moods, affects our thinking processes, can boost our immune systems, and impact on how we perceive beauty.
Colour has also been found to be a strong indicator of health. Doctors use changes in colour to help diagnose illness and disease. So if a person has difficulty discerning between colours, perhaps it would be better for them to say: “I am unable to see subtle differences in colour.”