Easy Ways to Add More Color to Your Home

To foolproof and simplify the process of decorating the home, you often start by building a neutral, unobtrusive collection of furnishings and other home items and accessories. Although this is a smart way to avoid buyer’s remorse, it can also leave your home feeling somewhat impersonal. To go the next step, you will need to take some risk. However, this risk does not have to be extreme in magnitude. You can change smaller facets of the house and stop there, or you could use those changes to experiment before you commit to a large-scale transformation. Follow these easy ways to add more color to your home to animate it into one that reflects you better.

Paint a Wall

Paint one wall in one of your rooms in a new color to transform a bland aesthetic without needing to add new items or furnishings. By painting a single wall, you will insert an extra dimension to the room that differentiates it into distinct parts. This is in contrast to a room where all walls are the same color and blend together, either sinking into the backdrop or demanding all notice.

You can create a working balance between bright and soft colors or make a more pared-back combination of two light tones. Though the overall intensity between these two paths may vary, they both offer tasteful levels of interest to a room. Just keep in mind the hues that are already present in the room you are updating so that the look of the new wall fits in with everything else.

Paint Cabinets and Drawers

Your efforts at elevating your home need not always be audacious. Painting cabinets and drawers can improve the appearance of your home without necessarily creating too large of an impact. Decide on a palette composed of similar tones, and paint the cabinets and drawers in one of these shades.

If you want to include some vividness but don’t want it to be too upfront, a clever trick you can try is to paint the insides of drawers or cabinets with a lively color. You could paint the portion where you place objects, the back side of cabinet doors, and/or the sides of drawers that are only visible when they are pulled out. As you go about your daily life, you’ll have a bit of colorfulness peaking in and out without catching all the attention.

Accessorize with Furniture Fabrics

Although it’s probably impractical to switch out all your chairs and tables to energize your rooms, you can accessorize them with fabrics that work well when juxtaposed with the furniture. In the living room, the easiest way to do this is with throw pillows on the sofa. Since they are relatively small, you can be bolder with the prints and colors that you choose. While your sofa is gray or beige, the pillows might be a striking turquoise or show off an energetic floral pattern. As seasons and holidays come and go, you may also cycle through different pillows to match the occasions. Similarly, you may change the blankets and sheets on your bed to form a focal point in your bedroom using colors and designs that stand out against a muted backdrop. By adding color using these easily interchangeable pieces, you can add depth and interest to your home without committing to one theme or color palette.

Choose Vibrant Stationery

Your desk or office space can be somewhat of a downer when you associate it solely with work or studying. You can counteract this effect with a simple change, though. Find vibrantly colored stationery items that you can place at your workspace and use to lift the tone set there. Small stationery such as pens, pencils, highlighters, and notebooks can act as visual decorations that brighten up the neutral desk and computer that you have. At the same time, they will serve the practical purpose of helping you to take down notes and stay organized. Pick a mix of colors that you enjoy, like blue, red, yellow, green, orange, and purple. You can proceed based on whim or coordinate the hues as well.

Bring in Some Plants

If it’s more color you want, why not go for a natural way to include it through the use of plants? Just about any plant will invigorate your home by hearkening back to the refreshing outdoors with an elegant complexity that cannot be entirely replicated by human-made objects. They will supply a verdant green with their leaves and can show off pretty much all other hues through their flowers.

Select species that fit well with your environmental climate. This will make it much easier to keep them looking healthy and bright. For those that bloom, choose plants that have flower colors that enhance the rest of the décor. A pink flower may contrast well with a background that is mostly white and blue, for instance.

Get an Area Rug

Adding some color can feel unnatural at times when you already have a tight but dull arrangement. If you are worried that inserting color through a peripheral item will not look right in a specific room, try getting an area rug. Since the rug sits at the bottom and center of a room, it has the potential to establish a new foundation for it. Choose a rug with the colors you want to have in the room and set it down beneath furniture so that you can organically bring in those colors in other accent pieces without it feeling as if they are coming from nowhere.

The pattern style of the area rug can also inform the mood of the rest of the room when working in conjunction with color. For example, you may want to create a warm feel by using red, orange, and yellow as the dominant colors. You can use a southwestern style rug to establish these hues and create the perception of a warm, dry setting. The rug thus acts as the adhesive that ties all the individual elements scattered around the room together.