Adding punch, sparkle and buzz to your new custom Florida home is as easy as opening a paint bucket. Maybe not quite that easy — you’ll need to pick your colors first. And, you may need lots of buckets of paint. But, becoming a drama king or queen with your interiors doesn’t require costly architecture, designers’ fees or buying prescribed accessories. It only requires a sense of fun, plus a willingness to think beyond color status quo. Read on for our suggestions.
Don’t Fear Bold Color
Fire-engine red? Eggplant-purple? Do it! Especially if you and your household adore those colors. Saturation makes a statement. Just be sure to check the room’s natural and artificial lighting. It should balance with the color. Also, keep furnishings streamlined and un-fussy so that they’ll compliment their dramatic surroundings. Wood, metals, glass and fabric add texture and contrast. So do strong neutrals such as black, white and gray.
If you truly love white and beige, consider more intriguing variations of either color such as fresh vanilla with its light yellow tint, or an icy, blue-tinged white. Try painting one wall of that vanilla room, a fresh apricot, or one room of that icy-white room, a light blueish-gray.
Use Different Shades and Finishes of Same Color
Pick your favorite color, then approximately two or three lighter or darker variations of it on the color scale. Want to envelop a home office or bedroom in soothing blue? Paint the focal wall the deepest blue shade, and all other walls a lighter shade. Next, paint the ceiling the lightest shade of your chosen blue. Contrast by painting baseboards, doors and door frames a glossy or semi-gloss white or gray, or keeping them the same shade as the walls around them, but in glossy or semi-gloss finishes. You’ll be surprised at how rich and dramatic the depth of one color can be.
Go Small But Saturated
If you loved hot pink or brilliant lime as a kid and still do, use it somewhere. Large living areas probably aren’t the best choices, but utility rooms, powder rooms, hallways and foyers are great places to pump up the color volume. You’ll be happy every time you walk in them. So will visitors — who might wish they were so color-assured. You might hear a lot of, “oh wow!”
Paint The Entire Room
Banish bland ceilings! Those are unused canvases over your head. Painting a room’s ceiling the same color as its walls is the most seamless tactic, but consider two more: painting the ceiling a lighter shade of the wall color, or a more nuanced neutral color such as soft, burnished silver. The shimmer in a metallic shade reflects light. It also draws your gaze skyward, which expands a room’s feel. Choose between a mere hint of shimmer, all the way to rockstar gleam.
Seeking a new home to paint? ICI Homes is Florida’s Custom Home Builder. Contact us here.