Living in Colour
Living in Colour makes your home an intimate sanctuary which nurtures and supports you in your daily life. It assists you to harmonise your various in personality traits expressed in your living space.
Make a list of everything you can see and make a colour plan, which for an external environment brings together soil, rocks, vegetation, fences, paving, walls and built environment, including adjoining buildings. For an interior, list furniture, fittings, floor coverings, window treatments, objects, as well as your favourite personal colours.
Colour is the skin of your home
Skin breathes and connects the invisible organs and life processes with the visible external world.
Colour creates an atmosphere which holds together the subtle unconscious forces which give that special feeling when you walk into any home.
Most of us collect furniture and objects from different stages in our lives, and rarely collect things of all the same style. Conscious use of colour can harmonise all the elements in your living space into a feeling of warmth, safety and protection.
It can unify a fragmented architectural layout or increase traffic flow. If you want to unify different styles of furniture and objects to form a complete atmosphere, colour is one of the best ways to achieve it. You can be relieved of boring beige or white on white, by counterpointing the space with colour which will interrupt the monotony and create a dynamic home or office.
Whether you have an old or new home, a clever use of colour creates a joyous atmosphere—something you will want to come home to!
When choosing colours, you need to consider:
- the function of the space
- natural light
- artificial light
- objects in the space
- owners
- space dwellers
A nurturing environment
Living in colour enables you to create dynamic internal and external environment in which to nurture personal well being. It encourages everyone who enters your home or workspace to read the signals of the different aspects of your personality and to clearly communicate who you are and what you are about.
Harmony and disharmony
How do you satisfy contradictory colour choices by individuals living in the same house or office? Working with opposite colours is one of the most important aspects of composing colour themes and schemes—a bit like human relationships! So when trying to satisfy different tastes and personalities when choosing colours, it is important to explore the spectrum and a colour wheel. A basic approach is to use colours which appear opposite to one another in a colour wheel.
The harmonious effect of colour is the human response to a conscious application of the emotional, physical and metaphysical aspects of colour. Taking all these elements into consideration means creating a dynamic between the energies of the people using the space, the reflected colour from surfaces and objects and the changing colours which occur in response to natural and artificial lighting.
With your partner, choose a variety of paint chips from your local paint shop. Arrange them into a colour wheel and select pairs of colours which appear opposite to one another.
A harmonious effect is achieved in the use of colour by following the basic psychophysical fact that colour is created through the opponency process in the cones of the fovea in the human eye, i.e. red/blue-green, yellow/blue, black/white. In using this same principle in colour design there is a constant process of balancing these complementarities.
This reflects a basic human need for a spectrum of colours to create a total environment, which is achieved through the integration of different elements of both internal and external contexts.
Living in colour:
- promotes a positive atmosphere
- increases productivity
- adds interest and individuality
- adds value to your home
- increases perception of energy and warmth
- speeds traffic flows
- elevates self confidence
- attracts people to your business
- identifies market niches
- presents the correct image for your product
- improves concentration
- enlivens dead spaces
Living in colour affects human behaviour!