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The natural world always looks coordinated, and part of the reason is that Mother Nature uses a diverse pallet. Green goes with blue when it’s planted beside the river, and the navy goes with tan on the beach at midnight. With the right art and the right base color, you can build a decor around just a few pieces of art.
Put a Base Color to Work
If you love being in the mountains but can’t see them from your windows, investing in large nature wall art can satisfy your need until you can get to your favorite range. Once you have your chosen art, determine the primary color in the painting that you enjoy.
Fans of heavy forests can put deep tones of green to work. From tablecloths to couch throws, look for green fabric pieces that have a lot of visual texture. If it’s the sunset that catches your eye, seek out pieces in fire tones and calm them down with a misty blue.
Finally, don’t forget that beach sand is a color. You may be tired of greige, but consider all of the colors that go well on the beach or in the desert. From an orange sunset to a sage green cactus, there are a lot of color choices that work effectively against sand. Study the colors in a desert in bloom and have fun.
Use Vibrant Colors in Small Doses
The bright red rose is all the more beautiful because the other plant matter is more subdued. Follow nature’s habit and use vibrant, hot colors in small doses. If you love a misty seascape, use greys and whites on the walls and add orchid pillow covers or a plush throw of purple to your bedroom.
This can be especially effective when displaying your collectibles. A white shelf with brown baskets is a great background for basket lining fabric in bright yellow, red or orange. Color saturation is critical in these selections; use a mix of basket tones or find a natural weave product to blend in.
Create a Focus Over Distance
Part of the beauty of nature is the chance to see for miles. From your front door, consider creating an accent wall where you can hang small images in matching frames to draw the eye. Guests will be interested in the bit they can see, and be drawn across your home to the collection.
In these small frames, keep an eye on mat color. If you have a collection of pen and ink drawings in black frames, consider getting them matted in some of your favorite shades, or in the prevalent tones featured in your large wall art.
As an aside, if you have art on paper that you’ve collected over time, work carefully with your framing professional. Paper is inherently more fragile than many other products that can be used in the creation of art, so if your artist has any name cache, those pieces can become valuable over time. Your framing professional should be able to tell you how old the art is and the best conditions to preserve it.
Use Multiple Colors of Light
Overhead fluorescent tubes may be consider warm or cool, but neither of these tones is ideal for adding variety to your living space. If you’re hanging out with friends, light some candles and study how the light acts on the colors of their garments. Then turn the lights in your home on.
If you find that the light in your home dulls the color in your space, ignore your overhead lights and invest in small tabletop lamps that you can use instead. Create pools of light that allow your favorite colors to look terrific in direct light and to fade to darkness at the outer edge of the pool.
For those who are in particularly small or dark homes, add mirrors in clusters or run one long dressing mirror sideways high on the wall. Add a shallow shelf and put tall candles on this shelf that you can light when guests are coming so you can bounce natural light around the room and truly celebrate the colors in your space.
The key to color is to not be too rigid. Not everything has to match your couch, and clinging too tightly to a formulaic color scheme can mean that your favorite pieces won’t look right because they’re flying solo. Make sure that all of your accent colors occur at least twice in the space.
