Color and Mood

Relying strictly on the color wheel to make decorating decisions leaves an important factor out of the equation: the moods that colors can create. The colors you live with really do influence your emotions.

Some palates lighten and brighten your mood while others pacify or purify. We respond to color with our hearts, not just our heads, so it's important to choose wisely.

Understand that colors behave in three basic ways -- active, passive, and neutral -- and you can easily match every room's colors to your personal desires and taste and to the room's purpose.

Active Colors

On the warm side of the color wheel, active colors 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 colors -- 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 "uncolors" -- brown, beige, gray, white, and taupe.

Neutral colors neither activate nor pacify but combine and cooperate, bridging together different rooms and colors. 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 colors; crisp white intensifies them.

Typical Colour Moods

Pink: soothes, acquiesces; promotes affability and affection.

Yellow: expands, cheers; increases energy.

White: purifies, energizes, unifies; in combination, enlivens all other colors.

Black: disciplines, authorizes, strengthens; encourages independence.

Orange: cheers, commands; stimulates appetites, conversation, and charity.

Red: empowers, stimulates, dramatizes, competes; symbolizes passion.

Green: balances, normalizes, refreshes; encourages emotional growth.

Purple: comforts, spiritualizes; creates mystery and draws out intuition.

Blue: relaxes, refreshes, cools; produces tranquil feelings and peaceful moods.

Pacifying Colors

Pacifying colors -- blue, green, and purple -- stay reservedly in the background, cooling, calming, and re-energizing weary spirits. Put them in rooms for resting and refueling.

Pale, serene greens slip quietly into a living room, bedroom, or reading room, hushing it with a whisper. Medium greens connect to nature, grounding and freshening the spirits of a home office, family room, or spa. Deep greens comfort a library, bedroom, or sitting room. But lime and parrot greens tend to waken and activate.

Blues and Neutrals

Blues and purples work meditative wonders. Pale azure and glacier blues wash a room in coolness and unstructured serenity. Proud, strong blues work responsibility and contentment into the mood. Pale purple-blues prompt reflection and dreaming.

Neutralizers are the "non colors": browns, beiges, grays, and white. Perfect for neutral territories of the house, such as kitchens or baths, these colors bridge together rooms, other colors, and moods. They neither activate nor pacify; they blend, combine, and cooperate.

White, another neutral hue, brings out openness, airiness, and an expansive spirit. It generously welcomes other colors into a room, framing them and showing them off to their best advantage.

Activating colors

Activating colors, such as yellow, orange, and red, move forward, warming and cheering, and inspiring conversation in varying degrees. Red, the intense one of this group, sparks emotions forcefully. Orange applies less pressure, and yellow merely suggests.

If these extroverted colors please you, put them to work in the activity rooms of your house. Ruby, raspberry, or brick reds pack a punch in entries or halls. Even people who can't relax amid strong colors find a short spurt of red's exhilaration comfortable as they pass through a brilliant hall.