Matching Color to Character in Your Home
How to Add Light and Dark Colors to Your Home
People have an innate inclination towards color. Bright colors can brighten our day, blues can elicit calmness, and earth tones make us feel at peace. This phenomenon doesn’t stop within your house, and the colors of your design aesthetic can and will greatly impact the mood of your home. Many different color combinations can create an enjoyable environment, and there’s no need to count your favorite color out because of design. However, you should carefully analyze how your home absorbs warmth and accomplishes coziness through color. Additionally, colors can literally absorb warmth depending on their shade, so shades should be chosen carefully to fit your house’s climate and environment.
Interior Home Colors
The insides of our homes reflect who we are, and welcome guests into our space.
Light Interior Colors
Light-colored rooms are known for being bright and airy. Light colors extend the space of a room, making it feel bigger and more open. This is especially true in already large rooms, or those with raised ceilings. This openness helps cool down rooms, both physically and mentally. Physically, sunlight bounces off bright surfaces better. Heat will then be reflected as opposed to absorbed. Mentally, our brains react to spaciousness much like we do the great outdoors. A bright room, especially one with yellows, pinks, and whites, will feel happy, calm, and peaceful.
Dark Interior Colors
Darker colors, despite what many think, can actually help make a home feel more cozy. Dark interior shades absorb light from a room, and a well-lit room can accept a darker paint color or accent piece without any trouble. There is a happy medium to be found here, though, as a small room with too much darkness may come across as cramped, saddening, and musty.
Exterior Home Colors
We don’t consider it often, but materials specific to certain residential locations can be deeply rooted in the environment. There’s much reason that white stucco reigns in the Southwest while red brick suits Northeastern homes so well.
Light Exterior Colors
In geographical locations where the sun is available close to year-round, white exterior features are best. It’s much easier to warm a house than it is to cool it, and light exterior shades help reflect sunlight away from a house.
Dark Exterior Colors
Darker color shades should be used tastefully and with summer in mind. While certain parts of your home will get colder during winter months, the color of your walls, roof, and exterior home features should be based on the hottest months. If dark tones happen to be your favorite, save them for sheds, garages, or parts of the home well-covered by shady trees!
Landscaping
For most of us, we assume landscaping and outdoor spaces should always be bold and bright. That’s how flowers bloom after all, isn’t it? Yet, this might not always be the case! Color choices extend to the outdoors, and should represent a middle ground between your interior design and your gardening.
Light Landscaping Colors
Light colors can be great for beating the summer heat, and are perfect in hot environments. They reflect sunlight away from the area, and light stone is the ideal material for cool outdoor patio floors.
Dark Landscaping Colors
Darker colors suit shaded areas best. For homes in more temperate environments or properties with plenty of natural shading from foliage, dark stone can make a great patio flooring or wall. Dark shades absorb heat, so they should be left out of areas that experience direct sunlight throughout the day. But for a paved walkway along shrubbery? Go dark!
Landscaping Colors: Something In-Between
In spaces that receive direct sunlight during solely summer months, a mid-range color is ideal. Think tans, peaches, light greys, teal and aqua blues, light oranges and auburns, olive greens, and other mid-tones. Colors like these avoid lacking personality, like neutral shades can, but don’t absorb heat the way colors like black and dark brown do.
Choose Your Colors With Impression
Ultimately, the ideal home is a combination of light and dark aspects that intermingle for a synchronous effect. At Impression, we craft intricate custom home features to match any design aesthetic or home color. Our team of artisans is trained to hand-select stones that best match a given project. We take your vision, using state-of-the-art technology and French hand carving techniques, and bring it to life for the ultimate dream home. Contact us today to view our selection of colorful marble, limestone, and reclaimed terracotta stone options!
