Balancing Color
Orange, bright pink and yellow. Sounds like a color disaster waiting to happen, doesn’t it! Not necessarily, not if they’re balanced.
A request for bright orange or pink walls came from my 13-year-old stepdaughter. She was tired of the circa 1970 wood paneling in her bedroom and I couldn’t blame her.
It did look like the inside of a VFW Post!
Armed with paint swatches she collected from many visits to the hardware store, she planned to paint two walls orange (or pink, she wasn’t sure) and two walls white. Her thinking was that if she did all four orange (or pink) it would be too much and the white would brighten it up. Her instinct was to balance it: two in one color and two in another. She didn’t consider BOTH orange and pink, way too much, right?! Until she asked me what I thought! Being the color-obsessed freak I am, I took off on a color lesson.We had just purchased a floral basket for her grandmother, so we took a look at how Mother Nature does color. There were little pale yellow flowers with a punch of bright pink in the middle and just a hint of orange on the petals. The pink was so strong that there didn’t need to be much of it to make an impact and the pale yellow petals worked nicely as a neutral. You barely noticed the orange. But without it, the flower would have been too plain.
We changed her plan to one wall bright pink and the remaining three in pale yellow with orange as an accent throughout.
It worked!, and this is why:- You can create visual balance without literally doing equal amounts. It won’t take much of a bold color to balance out a softer color.
- Think three and go for asymmetrical balance, it feels more natural.
- Neutrals are important because they give your eye a place to rest. The bolder the color, the more important it is to have that visual resting place.
- Look to nature for color inspiration. Mother Nature has been at the color game far longer than any of us, she has a lot to teach.
It’s been a year and my stepdaughter still loves her room. And so does her little feathered roommate, who’s partial to pale yellow as well.