Relying strictly on the colour wheel to make decorating decisions leaves an important factor out of the equation: the moods that colours can create. The colours you live with really do influence your emotions.
Some palates lighten and brighten your mood while others pacify or purify. We respond to colour with our hearts, not just our heads, so it’s important to choose wisely.
Understand that colours behave in three basic ways — active, passive, and neutral — and you can easily match every room’s colours to your personal desires and taste and to the room’s purpose.
Active Colors
On the warm side of the colour wheel, active colours include yellow, orange, and red. These advancing, extroverted hues stand out to greet and sometimes dominate. They inspire conversation and an upbeat attitude.
Red, the most intense, pumps the adrenaline like no other hue. Small doses of the fire-engine hue wake up an entry or turn up the heat on a hearth-side den.
Golden or lemony yellows — good for home offices and kitchens — unleash creative juices.
Passive Colors
The cool colours — blue, green, and purple — will pacify, staying quietly in the background to calm and restore depleted spirits.
These tones are ideal for bedrooms or private retreats, but if you live in a cold climate, you may want to work in some sunny accents for warmth and contrast.
Neutrals
Neutrals are the “uncolours” — brown, beige, gray, white, and taupe.
Neutral colours neither activate nor pacify but combine and cooperate, bridging together different rooms and colours. They are good transitions for woodwork, trim, hallways.
These tones are most often seen in functional spaces like kitchens and baths. However, if you like the serenity seen in neutral palettes, even dining rooms and living rooms can benefit from a neutral scheme.
Darker neutrals tone down other colours; crisp white intensifies them.
