Colors in Your Home, Simplified

Ideas

We all know someone who raves about their capsule wardrobe. The idea is simple - have a set of items that all goes together so that you can mix-and-match everything together and still have it look great. In practice, it's not that simple. What if you love the color red but it looks terrible on you? Will your look be too boring or dull? Do the colors vary seasonally?

You can do the same thing with your home - stick to a set "collection" of colors so that you can move things about your house "recklessly" yet still have things look cohesive.

How many colors is right for you

This will vary from person to person and how specific you want to get. For some people, "blue" is a color, and for other people "navy," "aqua," and "sky blue" are all separate entities. I think in general, the closer together your colors are (e.g. tan and ochre), the more colors you can add in without things starting to look chaotic.

Steps

Look to the following things for inspiration and try to grab a collection of colors from there:

• Your clothing wardrobe
• Your favorite vacation spot
• Your favorite restaurant or store
• The place where you grew up
• Your favorite relative's home

Create a Pinterest board that has the vibe you are going for. Don't focus so much on what the images you gather are of - collect images of not just rooms but also clothing, jewelry, makeup - literally anything that has that "vibe" that you are going for.

What Colors Do I Use at Home

Pre-pandemic, I would say that I was less laser-focused on my home color palette. The upper floor tended to have cooler colors (blues and greens) and the lower level had warmer colors (pinks and yellows).

In 2020, my colors at home were mostly whites and blue-greens or greenish-blues. Colors like jade, teal, and aqua popped up regularly.

In 2021, I used less white, kept gravitating to aqua, and added lime green. Frankly, looking at lime green makes me happy, and 2021 was a pretty dark year globally, so that's why I added it. Basically, I swapped in a new "energizing" color.

I find that my laser-focus makes it really easy to buy things for my home because I'm not looking at ALL. THE. THINGS. on Amazon (or the internet) - I am just looking at the things that fit my specific color palette, which automatically weeds out 90% of the products in a given category. For example, I might need a whisk. So I will either go to Amazon and type in "whisk, aqua," then sort by highest average rating. Or, I will go to Google and type in "whisk, turquoise" and pick the first one that will meet my needs, i.e. whisk food and not break in two uses.