How to Pick an Accent colour for Your Home

We think most people get hung up on choosing and playing with color, because they think they have to choose a lot of colors for a colorful result.  Totally untrue.

Would you agree that this living room is colorful?  Excluding the neutrals, like the gray couch, off white rug and cream chairs, how many colors do you see?




 That’s right, two.  Yellow and Blue.  It is the amount of color and the number of times it appears throughout the room that makes the room colorful, not the number of colors used.

 Okay, let’s do another one.  Here another living room.  How many accent colors do you see which are used in 3 or more places?

 

In this image, we see 3 repeating colours - aqua blue (sofa and lamp), fuchsia (in the art, skinny vase and flowers) and yellow (in the art and flowers)  Again, it is the number of times the colors are used throughout a room that makes it colorful, not the number of different colors.
  You don’t have to choose a lot of accent colors or bold accent colors to make your space colorful.

Accent colors are used throughout a room on art, decor, textiles, and sometimes furniture.  A well-defined accent color palette can help your home feel cohesive.
There are 3 must-know principles about using accent colors for maximum effect, minimum effort (and minimum color decision-making angst).

3 Accent Color Principles:

1. Use a small palette of accent colors throughout your home. You don’t need a lot of different colors to make a space colorful.  Unifying accent colors across rooms helps your home flow. It also makes redecorating easy because you can move accessories between rooms. With this principle in mind, when considering new accents make sure they can be used in at least 3 different rooms. Choosing accents that work in more than one place gives them staying power in your home.
2. The main accent color in a room should appear at least 3 times in different areas of the room to look intentional and draw the eye around the room. The accent color isn’t limited to small accessories, it can also be used on upholstery, painted furniture, and art.
3. When choosing different colors that go well together, it is easiest to stick to all clean colors or all grayed out colors.  Clean colors are crisp and clear (the inner circle below).  Grayed out colors are muted and played down (the outer circle below).  Mixing clean colors with grayed out colors is harder to pull off, so stick to one or the other.

Once you have your entire home colour concept planned, you can move onto choosing your accent color palette. When you choose accessories for your home, you will draw from this color palette along with your wall color palette.

Accent colors are a whole different ball game than wall color. Your wall colors need to be livable and relatively neutral because they cover a large surface area and are more permanent, but your accent colors can be less rigid. You can have more fun and take more risks with small accents.

A few questions to consider when you are choosing your accent colours: 
- What are your favorite accent pieces you already own?
-  How do you want your accents to show up in your home? stand out or blend in?

Monochromatic (Blend in)

Choose a tint or shade that is only one or two steps off of your bold wall color.  For blue-green, that would look like this: 
Choose one of the analogous colors to your wall color, that is one of the colors right next to your wall color on the color wheel.  Analogous colors have less contrast and are more restful.  Because they are so close to each other on the color wheel, the accent color will be a subtle difference.  For blue-green, an analogous option would be blue or green.

 Make those accents pop or stand out

 For a single accent colour try one of these 2 ideas : Choose a complementary color to your bold wall color.  For blue-green, the complement is red-orange
 


 

 Or,
Choose a monochromatic color that contrasts with your bold wall color.  Choose a tint or shade several steps lighter or darker that stands out against your wall color.  For blue-green, that would look like this: 







 

Example of a room with one accent colour:
 


For two accent colors that pop, try one of these methods:

• Choose split complementary colors to your bold wall color.  For blue-green, the complement is red-orange.  The split complementary colors are red and orange.

• Try creating a color triad starting with your bold wall color.  Here you are choosing colors at the corners of an equilateral triangle on the color wheel.  For blue-green, the two colors that complete the triad are red-violet and yellow-orange.  
• Choose an analogous palette of the 2 colors in a row next to one of your wall colors on color wheel.  For blue-green, here’s what the options look like: 
•  Example of a room with 2 accent colours (analogous palette) Red and orange are side by side on the colour wheel: 

• For three accent colors, try one of these methods:
• Choose a tetradic color combo.  Imagine you are choosing 4 corners of a rectangle on the color wheel.  Notice a tetradic combo includes the complement of your starting color.  And, the two colors forming the rest of the rectangle are complements to each other.  For blue-green, the tetradic combo includes red-violet, red-orange, and yellow-green.  
• Try an analogous palette, meaning three colours that are side by each on the colour wheel
•  

 Example of a room with 3 accent colours: