How to start thinking about creating a personal color palette for your home
Hello, hello!
Welcome to what’s really the first proper post here. There’s plenty to unpack and discover in all things related to color, but I thought we’d start by exploring the idea of creating a personal color a palette.
“Gah! What on earth is a personal color palette? And do I need one?”
I hear you! Don’t panic.
A personal color palette is a collection of colors that act as a guide (and that’s really all it is) when picking out wall colors, wallpaper, furniture, accessories, pillows, tiles, that outside umbrella for the patio. There’s no requirement to stick to the colors you chose at all but it can be grounding and stop you from considering everything and anything when you’re out looking for things to furnish your home with. Some helpful parameters, that’s all.
And no, it’s not necessary, but it can be fun to think about. If your goal is to create a home that looks like you, feels like you, and is a true reflection of who you are, well, that becomes so much easier when you have something to base your decisions on.
Let’s use my kitchen as an example, mostly because I have decent photos of this room! Red and blue are colors that run throughout our entire home. We instinctively pick things in these two colors time and time again. So it makes sense these colors are the foundation of the color palette of our home. It doesn’t mean that we have blue walls in one room, red walls in another. Knowing we like blue and red simply gives us a direction to go in. Because we know like a bright, electric blue and a classic, primary red, it guides where we go on the spectrum with pink, orange and any other colors we chose. We wouldn’t put a hot pink on this ceiling, for example, because it would clash with the red and be just, too much! But a soft, mauve pink compliments and works in harmony with the red. Additionally, a peachy orange on the island wouldn’t have been punchy enough. There is some balancing of saturation levels and tone that needs to be done with a color palette, but we’ll save that for another blog post.
Photos by Aimee Ryan
How to start…
There’s a high chance you haven’t given the idea of a personal color palette much thought until now and that this very concept is a little alien to you. That’s ok! This is a safe space :)
So, let’s say, for argument’s sake, that right now, your home is a collection of things you like (or maybe you don’t!) and you like them because, well, you like them! If you were pressed further you’d probably be able to give some reason as to why you like them, but for the most part, things catch your attention and you don’t really give much thought as to why.
And that’s also ok! If you’re working off a feeling for what’s right and it’s working for you, keep going! But if you find yourself regularly questioning what color to put on the walls, what color accessories to add to your living room, kitchen, bathroom, it might be worth spending some time thinking about what you like (and don’t!).
An easy way to approach building and defining a personal color palette, is to look around your home and see if you can notice any patterns. You can also think about whether you tend to gravitate towards certain colors, or if there are certain colors that you would never consider.
If that feels like it gets you nowhere and you want to start from scratch, I find a great starting place for any of this kind of work is Pinterest. It’s easy to use, absolutely chock full of images to peruse and pin, and the perfect place to collaborate with whoever you share your home with (given their input is important here!). Instagram also has a good save feature, but it doesn’t quite offer the same level of complexity in saving, so I tend to prefer Pinterest. I know not everyone is a Pinterest fan, and you don’t need to be, you can find your own way to collate and store images, even a good old fashioned analogue mood board will do the trick!
A quick guide to discovering your personal color palette using Pinterest
Here we go!
(You’ll need a Pinterest account to play along here, it’s free and quick to sign up if you don’t already have one)
Start by creating a board. Within that board create separate sections for the different rooms you want to pay attention to; Living Room, Powder Room, Kitchen etc.
Start searching for images. Work room by room so as not to get overwhelmed.
Now to searching! Begin with a broad search such as ‘Living room ideas’. The living rooms you’ll come across won’t necessarily look like yours, but you’ll see examples of rooms that you like. At this point, just save that image into your ‘Living Room’ section. Don’t worry too much about whether or not you would actually decorate in that exact way, just pin it because there’s something about it that you like.
Keep searching and scrolling and pinning until you have at least 20 pins in each section.
At this point, when you look back over the images you’ve pinned, you should be able to see some patterns emerging.
then, ask yourself some questions like:
Am I mostly pinning images with white walls?
Have I pinned images with a paired down muted palette or am I drawn towards more vibrant hues?
Is there a particular color, or color theme that features in many of the images?
Am I pinning images with lots of color in them? Or do I like more neutral rooms with a pop of color?
Are colored sofas a thing for me? If so, what colors am I drawn towards?
…and so on and so forth!
Slowly you’ll realize that you are gravitating towards similar images, and over time you’ll be able to find two or three (or maybe more!) colors that can act as a foundation for your space and help you choose what else to pair with it. If you don’t know what to pair with it, try refining your image searches within Pinterest: eg ‘Living rooms with mustard walls’ and see what patterns begin to appear in the images you’re seeing.
And Ta-da! That’s how we start! And remember, it’s just a guide, a fun exercise to get you thinking around what you do and don’t like. If you give it a go, let me know how you get on, I’d love to hear from you!
And…
Iffffff you’d like to dig deeper on this, or tackle any other color-related questions, then stay tuned because very soon I’ll be offering Color Chats; individual calls with me where we can talk through questions around color that are specific to your home. You’ll be able to book a time with me directly, here on the website and we can chat through all the things! More coming very soon!
Or!
You can book a full service color consultation with me, right here with my Color Sessions service. Not sure what’s a Color Session entails or whether it’s right for you? No problem, just send me a note! I’d love to chat more about how I can help you.