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Choosing interior paint colors for your living room can be quite a confusing task, considering how there seem to be like a gazillion options available out there with newer styles being added to the list all the time. To pick the right color combo, you’re gonna have to do a little research and learn how colors work, which ones reflect your personality the most, and how they affect your mood.
But don’t worry though, you don’t have to do all the work alone. In this article, we’ll be going through multiple concepts regarding colors and with brief explanations for each. Make sure to pay close attention as the color set you end up picking is the one that will define the vibe of your living room and influence your mood on a daily basis.
Quick Disclaimer before we start
Colors and how they make us feel are subject to our individual perception – influenced by our life experiences, thought-processes, and pattern recognition abilities. The ideas and thoughts mentioned in this article are taken to be as a standard average for most people.
However, for individuals suffering from mental illnesses like photosensitive epilepsy, some colors or contrasting patterns may trigger seizures and feelings of uneasiness. This article may contain images of the like nature. If you’re someone who is suffering from the aforementioned disorder, we recommend you to stop reading this article and consult a therapist and get professional medical treatment for the same.
Understanding Color Science
Humans experience color on a spectrum. That is to say that we perceive, understand, and make sense out of their effect by learning about the opposite extremes, such as:
- Warm and cold colors
- Happy and sad colors
- Relaxing and energizing colors
Warm colors like red, orange, and yellow can bring out a more “high-key” or “up-beat” feeling. These colors are often used to grab attention and can gear you into a fight-or-flight response.
For example, think of stop signs or hazard warnings. Red is so often used a sharp color signal that needs immediate attention and is very easily visible from a distance.
Similarly, yellow can make you feel happy, energized, and cheerful. It is often used in children’s coloring books, toys, or TV ads for women’s clothing.
As a little side note, a yellow wall can give a very good contrasting effect if you plan to mount a flat screen TV on it, since the black turned-off TV screen will pop-out against the bright yellow wall behind.
On the other hand, cool colors like blue, purple, and green can evoke feelings of calmness, serenity, health, and melancholy. While green can make you feel safe and protected, blue can make you feel tranquil or sad.
Now here’s the fun part: colors like purple and green do not strictly belong to one or the other category and can be used to represent values that are not generally associated with their side of the family.
For instance, green carries elements of both yellow and blue, and purple carries elements of both red and blue. Colors that belong in multiple categories are very versatile and can be used to express multiple feelings.
Understanding Contrast and Combination
Now that you’ve gained some insight on how colors work, let’s put them up on your walls. We’ll be seeing how different color combinations carry different meaning and how parallel colors with different values can create a beautiful duality when displayed together.
Below mentioned are some ideas you can use as examples to understand and choose your preference color scheme, making sure that they reflect your personality and give the vibe that you want every time to step in your living room.
Navy Blue & Yellow
We bet you’re gonna love this combo. Why? Because it so beautifully intertwines two very different personalities. On one hand, Navy Blue is a very business-y and corporate-y color and gives out the vibe of stability, discipline, and conscientiousness.
But on the other hand, yellow is the color of cheerfulness and liveliness, almost like a little kid with an exuberant personality who likes to play with soap bubbles. This combo is best for the people who define themselves as “conservative yet creative” i.e. the people who are disciplined but also treasure the child-like values in them and look forward to new and exciting adventures.
Speaking of new and exciting, perhaps you’d like to replace your old flat-screen TV with a new curved one. Not only are curved TVs more immersive because they work with the natural panoramic vision of your eyes, but also offer wider viewing angles and increased depth and contrast.
If you’re thinking of buying one, you may be wondering, do curved TVs need a special mount? To find out, you can check out our quick self-help guide and learn more by simply clicking on the link.
Grey & Pink
Grey is often perceived as a dull color, but it also gives out the vibe of wisdom, neutrality, and stillness. Pink, unsurprisingly, is the exact opposite. It is perceived as innocent, curious, kind, and cute.
Finding the right balance between these two can be quite challenging sometimes given the fact that they carry personalities that are poles apart, but done correctly, they can make your living room stand apart from most others since this combination is not very common.
White & Purple
The combo of white and purple is one of the most underrated one when it comes to interior designing and decor. The values white and purple represent are polar opposite, but when put together they create a beautiful chemistry of colors.
While white feels calm, clean, minimalistic, stable, and collected, purple feels intense, sexy, chaotic, creative, and attention-grabbing instead. When put together, these two sets of drastically opposite values gracefully complement each other.
Conclusion
Apartments can often start feeling dreary if no changes are made every once in a while. Ideally, interior paint is ought to be altered at least once every decade.
We hope we were able to help you out in deciding the colors you want to pick for the next time you want to bring new life to your beautiful walls. Feel free to use and experiment with the tips and tricks mentioned in this article and see what works the best for you! You can also check out this post about the best smart home gadgets for TV lovers.
updated: July 08, 2022
