Top Tips To Choosing Your Perfect Artwork — Colour
Oct 07, 2018
Do you love art, but struggle to choose the perfect painting for your home? Do you wonder what colours to use to bring your home to life? Then read on for my top tips how to use colour to find the perfect artwork to decorate your home with style, elegance, and creativity!
As an artist, I have a unique insight into people’s decision-making process when it comes to choosing the perfect artwork for their home! What do many people struggle with? Colour!
Colour is such an emotive topic… Everybody has a favourite colour! Most of us have a colour that immediately transports us back to a specific experience — a favourite vacation, childhood experience, or emotional moment. And it is proven by various scientific studies that humans are hard-wired to interpret different colours in different ways. Not only that but colour is often shaded by society and history — lots of different cultures have very specific associations with certain colours — some good, and some bad. And all this, whether we consciously recognize it or not, can form our own preference for colour in general, and colour when it comes to artwork and our home décor.
It might seem that once you recognize your favourite colour, you are then set to choose your perfect artwork. But it can be a bit more complicated than that!! Even when you chose your favourite colour, you then struggle with how to balance that colour in your home! After all, there is such a thing as too much colour when it comes to designing a home décor with style and elegance. When you introduce a new artwork to your home, you have to consider its context — how do the colours of your home work together? Are there accent colours or dominant colours?
Finding artwork to beautify your home is all about colour.
This is the time to consider what colour means to you and ask yourself some questions:
Certainly, when it comes to choosing the perfect artwork for your home, colour is such an important factor to consider. And this is when it helps to think about your own personal preferences, and those of your partner, or family. Here are some question prompts to help you:
- Do you love a certain colour? Do you have a favourite colour from childhood? Or a colour that makes you particularly happy? Or perhaps you are loving a certain colour trend?
- Are you looking to amplify a mood in your home? To create a calm and reflective atmosphere in your bedroom? Or maybe to bring together diverse elements in your lounge area? Are you looking to welcome visitors to your home with a vibrant colourful artwork by the entrance to your home? Are you looking to create an elegant and refined feel in your dining room?
- Do you want to use colour as an accent or a dominant feature? Are there certain accent colours that you already have in your home that you want to highlight? Or does your home already have a strong colour identity that you want to strengthen?
- Could a monochrome colour palette be the right choice for you? A black and white artwork can be a striking statement in the right space. If your home décor is already very colourful, you can introduce a monochrome artwork to add interest without unbalancing your home’s colour scheme.
Colour is about more than matching a sofa — it is about creating a mood in your home…
Each colour can be darker and richer or softer and more soothing.
Thinking about colour goes beyond matching a sofa, carpet, or curtains. It is about what mood you are trying to create in the room and in your home. Think about what colours you are drawn to in other areas of your life — your clothes, your shoes, or even your digital accessories. Keep in mind that often, what colours you love on your clothes or accessories may not be the same as the colours that you love to look at in your home. The irony is that the colour that we put on our body is most often seen by others, not ourselves… but colour that we put on our walls is seen by ourselves the most. After all, you look at your home’s artwork almost every day.
Consider what colours you absolutely want to have in the artwork and what colours are not as necessary. Is there one specific colour you are drawn to, or is there a colour palette that combines several different colours that could work? Are you loving darker richer hues or delicate pastel colours? Are you drawn to warmer or cooler colours? Are you looking to bring your home up to date or are you looking for colours that you connect with regardless of whether or not they are on trend?
Think you know yellow? Yellow can be the colour of happiness and the colour of jealousy and weakness.
It can be vintage and 70s or bright and young.
As an example, let’s consider one of my personal favourite colours — yellow. Yellow can be a darker mustard ochre colour which often can seem rich, warming, comforting. And depending on the feel of the artwork or the home décor can feel a bit vintage. Yellow can also be quite light and airy — think lemon yellow or pale yellow — often such lighter yellows can be seen as neutral because they are so close to true neutrals (beige, etc.). There are bright yellows (my favourite) — the bright joyful yellows that speak of sun and fun. These yellows bring sunshine and can completely transform a room and a painting. And lastly there are neon yellows, not for the faint hearted, which depending on the context can feel very fresh or dated. And depending on who you are, what your own personal background or history is, and what your own preference is, yellow can have further significance and meaning for you — in certain colours, yellow is the colour associated with jealously, betrayal, or weakness. While in other colours, yellow is certainly the colour of happiness, the sun, joy and luck!
Or as another example, let’s talk about purple. Purple can include rich, dark shades (such as aubergine) or lighter shades (including lavender and lilac). It can be soft or moody, depending on the nuance of the colour. It can be warmer (i.e. more burgundy purple) or cooler (i.e. more Cadbury purple). It can be trendy (i.e. ultraviolet — Pantone’s colour of the year), or historic (long considered the colour of royalty). Depending on the type of purple you choose for your home and your artwork, the look and feel of your home can significantly change from the dramatic and sexy to the light and airy.
These are just two examples, but most colours can truly transform themselves depending on their shade, nuance, and hue. The amount of white or black in those specific colours (dictating how light or dark they are) in combination with their warmness or coolness (red-tinted or blue-tinted) can truly create radically different moods and feelings when looking at an artwork or indeed when living in a particular interior home décor.
So where does this all leave us? Colour is such an important topic when it comes to choosing your perfect artwork or your home and certainly it pays to think about your own preferences. But the story doesn’t stop there! When thinking about colour when you are choosing your perfect artwork, thinking about your own colour preferences is just the starting point… there are lots of other things to consider… to learn more, check out my upcoming instalments of my top tips to choosing your perfect artwork!
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