How color plays a part in bedroom decor

Is your bedroom bland and blah? If so, you may be suffering from a sincere need to sweeten up your sleeping place. Often times, the main areas of the home are the focus of our interior design escapades. This can leave the bedroom- a place where many people spend several hours of their day- in a permanent state of boring color and design. It makes sense, of course. The bedroom is not on display as frequently as the kitchen, living room, and other such areas. However, injecting some visual flavor into the bedroom can be a great way to help you feel more at home. One of the best ways to do this is by painting and changing up the color scheme in your space. In the following paragraphs, we will talk about the best colors and combinations for a bedroom and what colors may be suited for other rooms of the home.

There are several ideas floating around about the connection between colors and emotions. Psychologists believe that a person’s subconscious can tune into colors and attribute subtle mood change based upon what colors they are near. Essentially, each color has a psychological value. Of course, it's not always an exact science, but overall certain colors tend to have certain effects. For instance, darker colors will make a room seem much more warm and intimate, while light colors will give the room a sense of airy freedom.

If you are longing for a more peaceful room to wind down and relax in, blue may be the proper way to go. It is frequently described as one of the more soothing hues and can have a calming effect. It can be noted that in the winter months, having a blue room can have an almost unwelcoming effect in certain shades. So, if you want your bedroom to help in lulling you to sleep, going with a nice, light shade of blue- from a light periwinkle to a light aquamarine- can aid in catching those ever elusive zzzs. On the flip side, using a darker shade of blue can be chilly and depressing if too much is used.

Green can have similar effects and can even portray a sense of generosity, abundance and fertility. It has an emotional connection with safety, so having green in the room can help to spread peace and stability through the mind. This hue has often been associated with healing and is considered beneficial to healing the body and mind. A unique color, green takes the best of blue- calming and relaxing- and tosses in a touch of yellow- bright and cheery. The bedroom could be a fantastic place to proudly display this color. Lighter colors, once again, are a much more freeing way to go, so a tea green or a light chartreuse may bring a myriad of calming moods that can help you to open your mind and heart.

Yellow is an interesting color, especially when compared with the other options for color schemes. Many of the colors are referred to in broad terms, so we will begin with a fully yellow room. When yellow is used in large amounts, yellow can more easily spark frustration in individuals and some studies point to the idea that a yellow nursery can cause babies to fuss more frequently than any other room color. However, the use of yellow as an accent color can prove quite the opposite. It has a tendency to stimulate mental activity, so it may be best suited for a room such as a craft room or study. This stunning hue can brighten and warm a room in smaller amounts, and can even help in purifying.

Using the color orange takes the cheer of yellow and heightened stimulation of red and marries them in a way that can be quite positive. Orange is often seen as a color that promotes happiness and joy. It also tends to influence creativity and fascination. Like yellow, a room that is primarily orange can serve as a distraction to the eye and brain. However, using in accents can help facilitate an internal push toward success. If orange is a favorite color of yours, you may try putting it in an exercise room or a playroom. This will allow for the extensive use of the color without providing too much stimulation in the room where sleep happens.

It may be best to stay away from different shades of red in the bedroom. Red is a color that tends to push excitement and energy. This color can work in a bedroom if it has less of a bright red quality and more of a dark or light quality that can mute it a bit, but it is still not a recommended choice for the bedroom. Some qualities that red instills include strength, power, and determination. This is true because red has a tendency to speed up respiration and raises blood pressure. It has also been known to enhance metabolism; this is part of the reason that many restaurants and fast food chains tend toward decorating in variations of red.

If luxury is the route you’d like for your bedroom to take, look no further than the color purple. Often associated with royalty, purple is a matching of the strength of red and the calm of blue. Wisdom, creativity, and mystery tend to be the underlying tones found in purple. Adding purple to your space can promote a hint of magic. This is the color that can add depth to a room when used sparingly, and sophistication when used in a more concentrated way.

Finally, neutrals tend to be a popular way to add dimension and break up the excitement that too much color can bring. They give the viewer a brief, clean place to land their eye. White tends to push toward a more positive sensation while black denotes a more powerful feeling. Neutrals are a great way to showcase color, and occasionally people choose to focus on the white, blacks, and greys in between as a color scheme. This can prove to be a very calming way to inject a bit of intrigue into the bedroom. One suggestion, however, is to use black as an accent color, because too much black can feel heavy and depressing.

Color psychology is a very interesting branch of psychology that is often forgotten by the masses. Using this guide in your next room makeover can help you to pinpoint exactly the feelings you’d like in your room, the guest room, or in a nursery. Play around with colors and you can invoke a certain feel. What would you like your bedroom to say? Figure that out and you are well on your way to a beautiful use of color.