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Pick a Perfect Color Palette
Whether you're color challenged or just uninspired, two sites offer a rainbow of options to help you choose just the right hues
When it comes to color, it's easy to think a little too outside the box, simply because there are so many color options to fall in love with nowadays. A cohesive whole-house palette can easily go astray, for example, when you use a paint color in a solitary room that doesn't mesh with the rest of the house.
Interior designer Charmean Niethart makes an important distinction: "There are colors that people like and colors that people want to live with — there's a big difference between the two." She says it's important for clients to discover colors and to decide on their color palette before the sourcing begins. "A palette is more than just about a can of paint. It's lighting, rugs, fabrics, tile, accessories and art — a whole-house palette," she says.
Niethart and other professionals are turning to apps and websites devoted to color, but none are as gorgeous to look at and as easy to use as Leslie Shewring's A Creative Mint and Jessica Colaluca's Design Seeds.
Interior designer Charmean Niethart makes an important distinction: "There are colors that people like and colors that people want to live with — there's a big difference between the two." She says it's important for clients to discover colors and to decide on their color palette before the sourcing begins. "A palette is more than just about a can of paint. It's lighting, rugs, fabrics, tile, accessories and art — a whole-house palette," she says.
Niethart and other professionals are turning to apps and websites devoted to color, but none are as gorgeous to look at and as easy to use as Leslie Shewring's A Creative Mint and Jessica Colaluca's Design Seeds.
by A Creative Mint
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Shewring's posts about color on A Creative Mint are inspired by a variety of sources: a vase of hyacinths and ranunculus, graph paper and, in this picture, a lovely vignette created by vintage ribbons.
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| This living room and the one below fall within Shewring's vintage ribbon palette and, with the exception of a few accents (yellow and green), demonstrate how color palettes affect everything: paint color, accessories, décor details. |
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by Brenda Olde
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by A Creative Mint
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Shewring's neutrals and reds scrapbook palette ...
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| ... can be seen in this dining room and the entryway below, a symbiotic marriage between muted nude tones and red accents. |
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Niethart frequently sends clients to Colaluca's Design Seeds for much-needed color therapy. "Design Seeds is a wonderful and simple concept for color visuals," she says. Colaluca is obsessed with color, a passion that began when she "melt[ed] crayons into little hue sculptures" as a child. This teacup palette is one of her creations.
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| This fireplace setup shows how the teacup color palette stretches through the couch, armchairs, coffee table, area rug, lighting and artwork. |
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Design Seeds' palettes are meant to inspire and can be applied to projects like wedding motifs and home remodels.
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by Busybee Design
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| A bedroom in Design Seeds' sunflower blue palette. Colaluca believes that you can be "fearless in color if you have a grounded and laid-in-tone base color." |
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Using the Design Seeds site is easy. "Go to the palette you love, mouse over the swatch you want the HEX code for, and the code should show up. Then input the HEX code into this color picker," Colaluca writes in her blog's "What's That Color" tutorial.
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by Shirley Bovshow
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| Color palettes can be applied to the exterior ... |
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| ... and interior of the home. You can search by color or theme ("global," "vacation," "the sea," "creatures" and so on) or simply browse Design Seeds' refined real-world palettes, like Venetian tones, sushi hues, spring antiques and popsicle tones. More: Runway to Room: Spring Fashion Pops Into the Home Get Outrageous With Wall Color Confident Color: When to Use Cool and Warm Hues |
Ideabook updated on Feb. 28, 2012.
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Lovely ideabook - thanks!
http://www.benjaminmoore.com/en-us/paint-color/bathsalts