Creating Ambience in Your Home with Colour

Do you want to evoke a particular mood or period in your home, or even to change the proportions or size of a room? Lighten a dark room or darken an overly bright room? You can achieve all these by using colour!

When we think of colour, the rainbow with its colour gradations i.e. red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet often comes to mind. To help us see how these colours relate to each other, scientists have given the world The Colour Wheel.

Blue, yellow and red, the primary colours, cannot be mixed from any other colours. On the other hand, orange, green and violet, referred to as the secondary colours are made from mixing equal amounts of two primary colours.

Pastel colours are made from pure colours mixed with a lot of white. Thus red lightened with white becomes pink; orange becomes apricot and violet becomes lilac. You can use these if you want your room to reflect your femininity.

Shades and mixtures are pure colours muted with either grey or black. These give a house an autumnal feel.

Warm colours are those dramatic reds, oranges and yellows that invoke firelight and sunlight. These colours create a cozy warm and welcoming atmosphere.

Cool colours include blue, green and violet. A large variety of different variations can be achieved by mixing them together, adding white, black or any primary colour. For example, aquamarine, a mixture of blue and green will create a sense of the blue of the clear ocean; shady jungle green can be made from mixing green and yellow if your desire to create a sense of the African Jungle. By mixing blue and white you can create a sense of azure skies, creating a cool, calm ambience in your home.

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