The frequent mistake that people do when, for example, start decorating their own living room, it’s focusing their energies looking for furnishings that are original, weird, and expensive often, believing that’s enough to make good tasty the environment they are decorating and then, that it will be good looking for friends, parents and others guests, so they hope to receive many compliments from them.

But as I said, that is a big mistake.

The primary and fundamental thing when we speaking about interior decoration, is the colors match.

If you think about it, that’s obvious. In fact, interior decoration and furnishings are the equivalent of clothes for people, and the fundamental rule of good clothing is to know how to match colors.

The brand or the price of clothes become secondary if they are not chromatically combined correctly.

If you wear a red Versace shirt with brown Armani trousers and blue Alviero Martini mocassini, you can be sure that you will not be elegant but just kitsch.

Well, interior design has the same principle.

A wise use of colors will be enough to impress your guests and even to guarantee your psychological wellness, because you will be the one who will live absorbed into the atmosphere of your living room.

How to use colors without make a mess? Very simple, it’s enough to do it using some Color Theory.

As an artist, designer and painter, I studied Color theory and visual communication for many years, and I used it with success in many of my works, paintings and drawings I realized, and, above all, even decorating my own house. Today I’m here to share those skills with you, so you can also apply them in a simple way to decorate your living room so you can obtain that cozy, classy atmosphere that you ever desired and , most important, an environment with character and style.

Is that means you have to study color theory in an academic way? Of course not. It’s enough to learn basic concepts and the rules it has to easy obtain your dream living room.

One of foundation concept to understand about color, is the “chromatic chord”.

The basic principle behind a chromatic chord is very identical to the one behind a musical chord: two or more kindred notes played together will produce an harmonic sound, so two or more kindred colors putted together will produce an harmonic image.

Well, in this particular case, I will talk about a specific chromatic chord, a basic one, made with brown and beige tunes.

That’s because brown/beige tunes are good to use for a contemporary style living room and also for an ethnic style living room. Furthermore, today’s trend of interior design is using those tunes a lot, probably you already have some furniture of those colors, so it’s more easy to apply it.

Well, the fundamental rule to create a basic chromatic chord is very simple: You have to work always tune by tune.

The best method to make the chord is starting from the two extremes. In this case, we will put a dark brown to the start and a cream/beige very clear to the finish. They are our start point:

Now you can insert the whole scale of tunes between them. Those scales could be countless if we want, but my suggest is to use only 4 or 5 gradation levels.

We will add black and white to this chromatic chord.

Technically, black and white are not colors, because the first is the union of all colors and the second is the absence of colors, but it’s for that reason that black and white are neutral and they can be combined with any kind of color or chromatic chord, it’s because of that they are the “not-colors” most diffused in interior design.

And finally we have our basic brown/beige chromatic chord:



This chord is the absolute guide that you have to follow diligently to choose all the pieces that will form your living room, from the sofà to the couch, carpets, furnishings, etc.

As I said before, it is not really important that the pieces you will choose are famous design, very original or expensive, the final result of this chromatic match will be satisfying and cozy even using simple furnishings, all the rest is added value if you can afford it, otherwise you can be sure of the right effect and that all your guests make you compliments simply because you created the right atmosphere and the right visual impact using this chromatic chord.

As you can see from that sample, a living room decorated according to the brown/beige chromatic chord perfectly works and it’s already cozy and classy.

The reason is simple and it has his base in Color Theory as always: This particular chromatic chord is “warm”.

In nature, the light spectrum is formed by “warm” colors and “cold” colors. The choice between warm tone and cold tone is fundamental, because each of them communicates unconsciously to our psyche different messages. It doesn’t exist a proper right choice or wrong choice, everything depends from the message that you want to communicate to the psyche, and in this case above all, from what you want to communicate to yourself, because you have to remember that you are the one who actually will live into the atmosphere that you created for your living room.

In this moment, it is not important to learn deeply the knowledge of warm and cold colors, because I’m talking about a particular case and I said you that the chromatic chord we using is “warm”, and that’s enough now.

As you saw, that brown/beige chromatic chord used to choose the colors of your living room works good even alone, but there is a problem again: that living room is monotonous, a little bit flat, and too much “austere”, and, above all, it has not “personality”.

And here is the fulcrum of this article. Now I will show you how to integrate the brown/beige chromatic chord with bright and vibrant colors that permit you to insert little and studied decorating details into your living room so it will acquire style and character.

Is that means you’re gonna spend a lot of money? Of course not, because when you decided the vibrant color to use, you will buy some decoration and furnishings with that specific color, like canvases, pillows, vases and similar. Many little, but fundamental, details that I guarantee will be enough to create the bright color explosion that you’re looking for.

Remember that quote: “Devil and God hiding into details”.

What I’m gonna saying is a true law of optics and color theory. They exist only two vibrant colors that might be combined with the brown/beige chord to create good contrast, movement and exaltation: They are Orange and Green.

It doesn’t exist another bright color, those two only have a good match with brown/beige tones. If you use a navy blue or a purple, for example, you can be sure that the final result would be unpleasant and very kitsch.

You could think that orange or green are not your favorites, and maybe your favorite color is lemon yellow so you would use it. But as I said, optics, colors and visual communication respond to very specifics laws that cannot be broke just because they don’t like to us very much.

Orange and green are the only two vibrant colors we can use in our case. Yes, it’s true, it would be even the clear blue, it has a good match with brown/beige chord, but it is not a vibrant color, so I will not talk here about it.

Orange and green are not colors that I’ve chose arbitrarily, they are both “secondary colors” and they are related by precise optical and geometrical laws, as I explain deeply later.

Now, all you can do it’s to choosing one color between orange and green and starting decorating with it.

The way of choosing it’s simple: What do you want your living room communicate? Which kind of atmosphere do you want it would have? And in which one do you feel more at ease?

As I said at the beginning, colors are essential in visual communication, they have a bigger power than shapes and a more quickly action in human psyche, shapes are perceived and elaborated in a second moment by our mind. For that reason the choice between orange and green, in this case, becomes very important, because each one of them will create a specific atmosphere that will communicate different messages and different feelings in those who will stay into the living room.

That kind of communication is totally on an unconscious level and it’s related to psychological and emotional bases that are universal. So knowing them becomes fundamental.

Now I will show you in details our two cases, orange and green, so you can choose which one matches better with your personality or message you want to communicate:

• Orange

Psychological key concept: “Warmth”

We add orange to our brown/beige chromatic chord:



As you can see perfectly, the result is surprisingly awesome. Despite orange comes from a different gamma scale and it have a different grade of saturation than brown/beige chord, it matches with all the tunes that composing the chord perfectly.

Orange is a “warm” color, so it’s at home here. “Warmth” is exactly the message that wants to communicate this choice. If you are a solar type, lively and merry, orange it would be the choice that reflects your personality better.

Here is an example of a contemporary style living room decorated using this orange contrast:

The contrast between orange and mono-tone brown/beige chromatic chord transmits energy, self-confidence and sociability. Guests in your living room will feel good welcomed, wrapped by his warmth and rejoiced by his verve.

Green

Psychological key concept: “Relax”

We add green to our brown/beige chromatic chord:

As you can see, the result is awesome like using orange, but the message is very different. Green is a “cold” color, and you don’t have to think this quality is bad, “cold” doesn’t means “ugly” , instead, in this particular contrast we created with brown/beige chord it becomes an important value.

All the tones that composing brown/beige chord are the same that composing wood’s shades, and combined with green they create the same chromatic scale of a forest.

This is a powerful psychological archetype that communicates a message of peace, restore and harmony.

If you are a calm type, relaxed and balanced, green it would be the choice that reflects your personality better.

Here is an example of contemporary style living room decorated using this green contrast:

The contrast between green and mono-tone brown/beige chromatic chord transmits stability, freshness and naturalness. Guests in your your living room will feel tranquillity, safety and restoration.

As you saw, both solutions succeed to create an outstanding effect, but feelings they transmit are very different. Now decision is yours, only you can decide which colors between orange and green you want to use to give to your living room the character you’re looking for. The warmth of the sun or the freshness of a wood?

In both cases you can be sure you’re not go wrong and above all, the effect will be fantastic.

To be honest, I have to say to you even that orange and green could be used together at the same time to activate a “warm-cold contrast”, but my suggestion is don’t do that without the help of an expert, because it needs advanced color skills to balance them correctly and avoid to make a mess or to risk ruining every classy effect, so go on choosing only one color.

Everything I said about those color matches could be used even in others ambiences in your home, but these particular colors I treated are very good for the living room or for the bedroom where they works as good as the living room. My suggestion is don’t use them for a study, for a bathroom (not with orange, it’s possible with green) and avoid to use them for kid’s room, where bright colors alone works good.

Well, now it’s time to actually decorating your living room with the vibrant color that you chose.

As I said before, you don’t need spending a lot of money to re-paint walls or to re-buy furnitures, couches and sofa. The effect can be obtained simply using some furnishings and decorations that are coordinated, related by the fact they all have the vibrant color you chose.

For example, if you chose orange, it’s enough buying some orange pillow to put on the sofa, and maybe even an orange lampshade and some vase that has orange and, above all, some canvas with orange on it.

Canvases are the masters of decoration elements. If we continue with the analogy between clothing and interior design, canvases would be like ties for men or jewels for women.

The right canvas chromatically combined with pillows, vases and the rest, it will activate the chromatic contrast that you want perfectly. The canvas subject could be abstract or real, as I said it is not a very important detail, priority are the bright colors that it’s made, shapes are on a following level in visual communication, so the canvas subject could be very simple and minimal.

To close, remember that it is not necessary that canvases and others decorations you will use have the same and identical color shade. For example, if the canvas you bought has a very bright orange tone and the pillows on the sofa have a more soft orange, it’s everything ok, the match will work just the same perfectly.

You can see all this your own into examples above.

Now you know laws and principles that rules the colors treated in this article, so you can start having fun decorating your living room, customize it with the vibrant color you prefer and transforming it into the cozy and classy ambience where you’ve always wanted spending your spare time, reading a book, watching tv and chatting with family and friends.

There are advanced concepts to combine brown/beige tunes with orange and green together to obtain even better effects decorating your home.

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