Colours add life and cheer to a living space. They set the mood for a room and are associated with specific human emotions. They evoke memories and make you smile and relax. Moreover, colours say a lot about your personality and taste. Hence, it’s important to choose the right colours for a living area.
But how do you know which colour to choose a specific room? Well, interior design experts often talk about warm and cool colours that set the mood of a dwelling in unique ways. However, it’s tough for homeowners to make a good choice in this matter. Hence, a majority of them go with beige or while to stay safe.
But not anymore! In this post, you will find complete information on warm and cool colours, allowing you to make an informed choice.
Warm and Cool Colours
Interior designers use colours as one of their main tools for adding interest and appeal to the home decor! Colours have the power to visually expand or shrink a space, raise and lower your ceilings, and even influence feelings. Therefore, when designing a space that promotes good health and wows your visitors, you also need to understand the psychology of colour.
Knowing warm or cool colours will make picking the right colours for your home easy! Colour is a very wide concept to explore. So, let’s dive in, right away!
Understanding the Colour Wheel
Let’s start with the established colour wheel and with primary colours, red, yellow and blue. The interior decor colour palette or the colour wheel shared below is pretty self-explanatory. The reds, oranges, and, creams are the warm side of the wheel. On the other hand, the blues, greens, and greys are on the cool side. The places where they mix are hybrid colours.
Colour Wheel
Colour wheel chart can help you understand the general categories of hot and cold colours. They are readily available online or at a paint store. Use it to select pleasingly warm and cool colours for your rooms!
Warm colours relate to the Sun. Think of colours that are a source of life, energy, and warmth, such as red, yellow, and orange. On the other hand, if you think of cool snowy mountains, you automatically tend to imagine a cool colour scheme which includes hues of green, blue, and violet. Knowing how to use the colour wheel to your advantage is an essential part of choosing a suitable colour scheme for your home.
Warm Colours
The side of the colour wheel that comprised of reds, yellows, oranges and their hybrids or combinations, is typically referred to as warm colours.
Warm colours are associated with sunlight, sand, fire, energy, and heat. They immediately attract attention and are full of energy and excitement.
Warm colours make a space look inviting by offering the occupants a feeling of close, friendly, and a cosy environment. These colours can make large rooms appear snug and warm. For example, if you have an overly large room, use a darker colour along with a warm hue. This will make your room appear cosy! Usually, these colours are perceived as hot, spicy, stimulating, and soothing to our emotions, which crave warmth and closeness. This is why Red is the most popular colour in the consumer goods market. Most people prefer buying products with red hues, like red lipstick, Coca-Cola, Ferrari, and others.
In case of home interiors, warm colours work well with the traditional decorating style. You can use them in social rooms or spaces with high foot traffic, namely the living room, dining area, and the kitchen. They are also ideal for restaurants and bars, where the socialising, eating, and drinking is dominant!
These colours are also known to have a beneficial effect on the health and wellbeing of the space occupants. They are proven to increase the effect of adrenaline, a hormone that increases the rate of blood circulation, and carbohydrate metabolism. They improve the breathing rate and regulate blood pressure and body temperature, thus making you feel warmer. Obviously, the stronger the use of warm colours in a room the more intense is the effect on one’s physical and mental wellbeing.
Cool Colours
Cool colours are those that have a calming or soothing effect on us. Basically, it is the side of colour wheel where you see blue, green, violet, and their hybrids. If you think of a cool serene lake or water body, you would imagine these cool hues.
Calming and soothing, cool colours help to quieten the emotions and sharpen your thoughts, by allowing our mind to focus and work at an optimum rate. Hence, cool blues are the most popular colour shades used for professional attire like business suits, formal shirts, ties, and uniforms. Cool colours are therefore best for the rooms where the concentration, calmness, and relaxation are most important. Hence, you can use these shares in the bedroom, office, study, and nursery.
Cool colours can effectively reduce the heat in rooms that get too hot in the summer. If you have a room that gets plenty of sunshine, try balancing the glare with cool colours, like evergreen and sea blue.
Cool colours are also great for the small rooms, where you want your room to appear large, as these colours have tendency to make your small room bigger.
Cool colours work well for bedrooms where people often relax. Hence, use soothing hues like ocean-blue for your bedroom as it absorbs intense sunlight or light instead of reflecting it. They have a tendency to “recede” (backing away from you) or “expand” a room by making space larger with comfort.
Therefore, even in interior cool tints are often used to paint the walls of a small room to make them look larger. For instance, if we have a small bedroom and want to make it look big, painting the walls with a light blue colour can make it more spacious.
A successful room design will always have a combination of warm and cool colours in its design palette. Colours often add personality and character to a living space. They add interest to ordinary rooms and balance well with the neutral colours.
You may also like to know about the Pink colour interior for your home.
Tell us your favorite room colours and share your experiences. We are eager to hear from you! You can also share and upload the images of your home in Best Home Designs section.