Color Terms You Need To Know When Decorating

Color is the key to successful decorating. You can have the most expensive furnishings you can find, but without the right color scheme, they mean nothing. Color can work magic in a room by taking disparate furnishings and uniting them with color.

Adding color to a room is quite inexpensive. A new color of paint and fabrics can totally change a room.

The human eye can perceive approximately 10 million different colors. Just imagine all of the different color combinations that can be created. Even so, some color combinations are definitely better than others.

When looking at colors, there are eleven different terms that you should know:

1. Primary colors are the three main colors that every other color is made from: red, blue and yellow. Primary colors are often used in children's rooms because they are bright and will catch a child's attention.

2. Secondary colors are the colors that are created when you combine equal parts of the three primary colors. The color orange comes from red and yellow; green is from yellow and blue; and violet is from blue and red.

3. Tertiary colors are the result of combining a primary color with the nearest secondary color to it on the color wheel. The colors would appear as blue-green, yellow-green, yellow-orange, red-purple, and blue-purple.

4. Related color schemes result from combining secondary and tertiary colors. For instance, the colors blue-green and green will evoke a calming effect because there are no jarring changes in color.

5. Complementary colors are located directly opposite each other on the color wheel. They would turn gray when they are mixed together in paint, but they can be used together - carefully - when decorating a room. Sometimes these color combinations can be too overwhelming so care is needed when using them.

6. Hue is a descriptive word for color, such as leaf green, robin's egg blue or burgundy.

7. Saturation means how saturated (how much color) there is in the basic color. For example, light blue and navy are both still blue. Navy is more saturated with the blue color.

8. The value of a color is how light or dark a color is. White has the brightest value and black has the darkest value.

9. Tints represent the colors that are closest to white in value. These would be pastel colors.

10. Shades are the colors that are closest to black in color, like hunter green or deep purple.

11. Neutrals are the "non" colors, like black, white, gray, brown and beige. They can produce a pleasing color scheme on their own or mixed with other colors.

Color plays an important part in decorating. The entire feel of a room can be changed just by changing the color scheme.

By Jude Wright
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