Choosing Your Color Scheme

Choosing Your Color Scheme

When decorating a child's bedroom, play room, or bath room, you may be stumped on what colors to use. What appeals to you may not appeal to your child and vice versa. While it is important for your child to be able to express his or her personal taste, we can understand that you might not want lime green walls and blood red carpet.

How do you compromise? How do you even choose a color scheme?

First, it is very important to let your child be involved in choosing a color scheme (unless you are decorating for a nursery or a small child that cannot be involved).

Second, arm yourself with options. Don't just ask what his or her favorite colors are, or you could be treading on dangerous ground. If you sit down with your child and give him or her something to look at and to choose from, you might find that your job is considerably easier. Plus, you will have some bonding and learning time as you plan together.

Using a color wheel to choose your color scheme can be incredibly fun and rewarding as the two of you explore the myriad of color choices available. It will also give both of you the opportunity to see how the colors you like coordinate together. You can find color wheels, from simple to elaborate, online, at a local hardware, paint or craft stores.

Generally speaking, there are several ways to choose a color scheme using a color wheel.

Primary colors can coordinate very nicely with their opposite, secondary colors on the color wheel. For instance, a boy's room might look dynamite with blue and orange, opposite colors on the wheel. The right shades of red and green, with complements of brown or blue, can lend to a very masculine look that is not in the least Christmasy. A little girl's room could be lovely with shades of purple, yellow, and cream.

Primary and secondary colors can also be matched with a neutral color, such as brown, cream, beige, gray, etc.

Matching pastel colors with brown has become exceedingly popular. Light blues with brown, pinks with brown, greens with beige... the color possibilities are endless.

Another popular option is to decorate with bold, contrasting colors. While black and white are often used as touches here and there, they can also be used in an entire decorating scheme. Consider the European coffeehouse look of red, beige, and black that has become so popular... Or the Parisian chic decor of black, white, and pink for a little girl's room.

Decorating with primarily soft colors such as white and creams, with a bolder color as an accent, is a way to turn an ordinary bedroom into a stunning masterpiece.

As convenient as color wheels are to viewing which colors coordinate the best, they are very difficult to put up against walls, carpet, or bedding to narrow down your choices. Paint swatches are free at local hardware or paint stores, perfect for trying out with bedding, walls, carpet, etc.

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