Decorating Guides
Confident Color: When to Use Cool and Warm Hues
Change the Mood of a Room With Colors that Advance or Recede
Knowing the difference between a warm color and a cool color can help you choose color combinations more confidently. When you understand how the temperature of a color affects how it's perceived, you can use that knowledge to design color schemes that work for you.
I talked before about how to use the color wheel to devise some basic color schemes. It also can help you determine the temperature of a color.
The basic color wheel is split into two halves, a warm half and a cool half. The warm half runs from red through yellow-green. The cool half runs from green through red-violet. Our eyes and brains perceive different wavelengths of light as colors. The importance in interior design is that warm colors tend to advance and cool colors tend to recede.
The basic color wheel is split into two halves, a warm half and a cool half. The warm half runs from red through yellow-green. The cool half runs from green through red-violet. Our eyes and brains perceive different wavelengths of light as colors. The importance in interior design is that warm colors tend to advance and cool colors tend to recede.
Since warm colors tend to advance, this means that they tend to draw in a space. This red living room feels more intimate because it's red. If the designer wanted to make the room feel more open and expansive, she would have chosen a cooler color.
If you have a large, sparsely furnished room and your goal is to close it in and make it feel more intimate, a warm color like this yellow can do that for you.
This tendency of warm colors to advance can be seen at work in this yellow-green accent wall. That accent wall is pulling the stairs closer to the dining table. Of course, it's not actually moving anything, but the perception is that the space feels closer.
If you're deciding on a paint scheme and there are elements in a room that you want to draw closer, point them in a warmer color.
If you're deciding on a paint scheme and there are elements in a room that you want to draw closer, point them in a warmer color.
Green is the first cool color of the color wheel. In green, the tendency for colors to advance stops and they begin to recede. By recede I mean that cool colors expand a room or a space.
This bathroom feels more expansive with a green wall than it would with an equally saturated red.
This bathroom feels more expansive with a green wall than it would with an equally saturated red.
A blue wall tends to make a room feel larger. This is important to know if you have a small room that you want to expand rather than make more intimate and close.
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You can mix and match warm and cool colors with purpose and meaning to advance your design goals and make a room more interesting. The blue walls and draperies in this living room are expanding away from the viewer and the yellow accents are advancing toward the viewer.
The warm colors in the painting on the mantle in this purple room is the clear focal point. By choosing the cool colors of the walls and furnishings, the designer is adding emphasis to the painting and she's using her knowledge of color theory to advance her goal.
The effect is subtle but impossible to miss.
The effect is subtle but impossible to miss.
The closer to red cool colors get on the wheel, the warmer they become. The last stop on the cool side of the wheel is violet-red. After violet-red, colors start to advance again.
Color theory provides a general framework to describe the behaviors of colors, and exceptions to these generalizations abound. Still, the tendencies of warm colors to advance and cool colors to recede are almost always true.
If you have a room with a low ceiling and you want the room to feel taller, paint the ceiling a white that's been tinted with blue. Similarly, if you have a very wide room that you want to feel closer and more intimate, then paint the room in a warm color and it will do just that.
How would you use warm and cool colors in your own home?
More: Choosing Hues: Roll with the Color Wheel
Color theory provides a general framework to describe the behaviors of colors, and exceptions to these generalizations abound. Still, the tendencies of warm colors to advance and cool colors to recede are almost always true.
If you have a room with a low ceiling and you want the room to feel taller, paint the ceiling a white that's been tinted with blue. Similarly, if you have a very wide room that you want to feel closer and more intimate, then paint the room in a warm color and it will do just that.
How would you use warm and cool colors in your own home?
More: Choosing Hues: Roll with the Color Wheel
The answer to those questions is in the color wheel.
Talk to a local interior designer about a color consultation