In photos - Renovating your home with colour and décor
“Putty and paint, and make a good impression”. This was the battle cry of certain trade fair stand builders, who extolled the magic of colour when it comes to changing the face of a room. At trade fairs, where constructions are made of wooden panels, and very quickly, a few hours before opening it is easy for everything to be still in the embryonic stage, an open construction site that often frightens. Then comes the putty, to close holes and cracks, and above all the colour, and lo and behold, everything changes face in no time, and the stand looks to all intents and purposes like a house!
colour magic how to repaint your home
In photo - Ambiente 2020 trade fair set-up Olivo Tappeti
So, colour is a powerful weapon for transforming environments. However, we cannot lie and hide the reality: choosing the right colours is by no means easy. Let us proceed with a step-by-step approach, first the most important things (first things first, say the English), and with a good dose of practical sense. Even if you go to an architect for the choice of colour shades, you should come to the consultant with a clear idea of what you want to achieve as a final effect, leaving it to the professional to translate your requests into colour solutions. If, on the other hand, you are a do-it-yourselfer, even more important will be the reasoning before you pick up your spatulas and rollers and set to work.
From the general to the particular: let's think about our (real) goals. Why are we going to paint one room, or the whole house? The answer “to freshen up” satisfies no one, and in any case a can of white for the ceiling is enough for that. Given that we face the effort, and given that giving a coat of white involves absolutely the same effort as revolutionising the environment, let's do a good self-analysis. Painting you can renovate, you can change the character of a room, you can change the optical effect, for example by balancing the proportions of long, narrow rooms or low ceilings, you can enhance niches, corners etc. What exactly do we want to achieve?
In photos - Always plan the work to achieve the goal
More than magic, one should speak of “sleight of hand” for colour, because it's all a matter of perception, hence of deceiving the eye. It has to be said that it is very pleasant for the eye to be deceived, because the important thing is the feeling a room gives us. So, let's go for tricks: a low ceiling painted in a light colour, contrasting with brighter walls, will give a sense of airiness even to small rooms that would otherwise seem stuffy. An all-light room will seem larger, while if what we want is to create recollection, to accentuate the cosy character of an area, it will be appropriate to choose a single colour, perhaps intense, for all the walls and possibly also for the ceiling.
In photo - Visual perception diagram
In photo - Narrow corridor
For corridors or narrow rooms, the solution is often resorted to by unifying the front wall and ceiling, using a darker, more intense wall colour to create a more spacious effect. Finally, a rather anonymous entrance hall is revolutionised and made decidedly glamorous if it is transformed into a “box”, by painting the door and ceiling as well, preferably in a striking colour
Finally, it is not necessarily the case that a wall has to be monochrome: low, boiserie-effect wall panels are becoming increasingly fashionable, as are wide striped patterns (horizontal or vertical). A bit like the human figure, the room, by visually making a horizontal cut, will also be shortened in height. Therefore, the idea of creating a coloured band at the base of the wall is more suited to rooms where the vertical dimension prevails, which you want to balance by leading the eye to focus on the lower part.
In photo - Horizontal cut
In photo - Colour in the children's play space
If you want to be a little more daring, you can visually delimit an area by painting the walls in oblique sections, creating corners in an open space to be dedicated, for example, to the office, conversation area or the children's play area. In many cases, the “wow” effect is also guaranteed here.
These solutions also allow us to create very special combinations with the furnishing accessories, not only based on colours, as we will see later, but also on patterns that refer to each other as, for example, between carpet and wall.
In photo - The carpet a stylish element in harmony with the rest of the house
→ read also part 2 on how to choose colour “Total white or colours?”.”
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