Choosing colours to spruce up your home

Nasab Apayi of Nasab Designs, recommends that you use rich earthy and warm neutral hues such as ochre, beige, different shades of brown, dusty rose, faded red or green.

“You can pair them with cream and blue accents. You can never go wrong because they give you a sophisticated look for a relaxed room. There is the choice of using deep and vibrant colours of red. This colour makes a room stand out in a way that gives good energy vibe,” Apayi explains.

She adds that sunny golden yellow is a cheerful colour that will spice up your space with good energy since it is warm and natural. Yellow and turquoise are Daphne Nyangoma’s favourite colours but she has also found a way of playing with other colours in her home.

Sleep-mode colours
“My bedroom has magenta curtains primarily because I love dark rooms when I go to sleep. My accessories are of mustard colours just to complement the magenta colour.

My living room has some black furniture, yellow accessories and turquoise curtains. The yellow here is to brighten up the space because the black furniture has a dull effect,” Nyangoma, an interior designer at Coat of Many Colours, explains.

Pauline Atai is an accountant with an eye and taste for beauty. Like Nyangoma, she is into turquoise colours. To these, she added some cool grey, in her bedroom.

With the colour combination, she created darkness in the room, which lets her enjoy sleeping a little longer over weekends than the weekdays. On a Saturday, for instance, she would like to enjoy an afternoon nap as the children do the same or go about playing games on television.

To her, the grey colour also creates a peaceful atmosphere in the bedroom, which doubles as her haven for meditation and rest. The accountant’s living room has a honey suckle and beige on walls to tone down the reflection from the television light.

Contrasts
Her couch is of animal print, beige and black so these contrast well with the opposite television wall, still. The mother of two chose to blend red, lemon green and black, arguing that lemon green and red brighten the room during the day when the windows and curtains are opened.

Brighten up
And on days when windows remain closed, or for someone who is not in the habit of opening windows, author Gill Hale, of ‘The Practical Encyclopaedia of Feng Shui, observes that corners of rooms are often dark, so he advises that it is a good idea to place something colourful there, like a vase of silk flowers, to add life to the room.

Feng Shui is a Chinese art or practice of creating harmonious surroundings that enhance the balance nature with the way people live within or outside their houses.

Besides creating bright spaces, there are reasons to have a dark room or corner, even for some hours. Atai says the back of the house offers a dark shade in contrast with the closed curtains to help the children sleep well.

Apayi advises that you also consider some shades of blue for the different spaces in your home since blue is appreciated to offer a calmer feel almost like the earthy colours but with natural feeling of nature.

“To add edge to your space, you can choose to add some deep tone colours like orange, tropical green, reds, turquoise blue and black. If you’re looking to add depth and calmness to any room,” the director of Nasab Designs, adds.
Interior designer and photographer, Alexandra-Natalia Irimia of Simple Design Home, adds that purple is the best colour for your aura. She adds that the choice of purple is explained to clean the soul while blue and white represents purity.

Personal taste
“Choice of colour all depends on personal preferences. The choice that one makes should fit in their lifestyle. The next consideration should be theme in terms of what one wants to achieve at the end of it all. It is recommended to work from dark to light, lighter colours being at the endings,” Nyangoma advises.

Also worth putting into consideration is a room’s orientation, fixed and furnished elements, surfaces in terms of texture of walls, be it rough or smooth then the mood one wants to create.

One should also factor in adjacent rooms, sizes of rooms, the source of light to the rooms all affect selection of colours for particular spaces in a home. “For example, one would choose green for their bedroom because of the calming effect they have since they are associated with nature. The toddlers’ room needs to be as colourful as possible,” the director of Coat of Many Colours, adds.

Day-care teacher, Jenifer Muzangana fortifies the point on use of many colours in children’s spaces because it is part of the healing process for those with squints as a correction remedy.

Light colours in small rooms
Nyangoma also adds: “Small sized rooms will require light colours for walls and curtains to make them feel bigger. Also, lower ceilings would be painted light colours to appear higher. Light sources affect how colour looks, for example if the same colour is exposed to LED and incandescent, the results are different so the choice would very much depend on lighting.”

In the end, one also has to be mindful of the elements in their house. The walls of Nyangoma’s living room are painted in pale yellow she put patterned wallpaper behind the television set to create some warmth in the room. She says if most elements in the house are plain coloured, you could choose pattern themes for accessories like cushions and curtains.

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