Colour and its use can never be underestimated. It can re-fresh and give a whole new energy to a space or piece of furniture. Choosing colours for your home doesn’t have to be a daunting process. There are so many ways to bring colour into your décor but we can start with the basics of colour theory.
Primary Colours
These we learned in pre-school and we were taught that these three colours can’t be created from other colours. Every other colour and colour palette can be created from the 3 primary colours, by adding black or white. The 3 primary colours are red, yellow and blue.
Image: Benjamin Moore
Secondary Colours
These we explored when we began mixing the primary colours together. So orange was the mix of red/yellow. Green was created by mixing blue/yellow and violet we created by mixing red/blue.
Tertiary Colours
Slightly more interesting were when we began to combine the primary with the secondary colours we created. This then we have a yellow green etc…. In the decorating world we work with colour everyday and we may use the term “hue” which to us is colour.
Image: Benjamin Moore
Tint, Shade and Tone
You may then hear us discuss the tint, shade or tone of a colour. In our world a tint is created by adding white to a colour whereas a shade is created by adding black. We may then talk about tone which in technical terms we are meaning how light or dark the colour appears or in other words how much white or black is in the colour.
Image: blog.knitpicks.com