Sunday, March 02, 2008

Purple Wins


There are some of you out there thinking of adding purple to your color scheme. It's a great color and on trend right now. If painting the walls, I prefer grayed down purples for adult rooms and love lavender for a little girls room. If your room gets a lot of light the color you pick will get washed out a bit so you can go a bit deeper or brighter. Just sample your colors and be sure to view the colors not just during the day but at night too. One great way to sample color is not just on the wall but to paint a 3-d object, like a cardboard box and leave it in the middle of the room. This way you get a better feel for the color and how the lighting in your room will alter the color at different times. The transition from day to evening shouldn't be jolting, unless that's what you're going for!

If you want to paint with purple the first thing you need to decide is if you want a warm purple or a cool purple. Purples on the cool side have more blue and on the warm side, more red. You need to think about how you want to feel when you're in the room and also consider what is in the room that is definitely staying. When you pick warm or cool be sure that one or the other takes a larger percentage and it's not 50/50 cool and warm.


Color schemes with purple include using it's complementary color yellow, which will give a big impact or for a subtler look try using purple with grays and silvers. Purple with green is also pretty, think of beautiful Irises and pansies.

Nature knows color best so try picking your palette from nature. I love the virbrant purples in the Iris watercolor by Jana.
You could get your whole palette from this painting. I might suggest the lighter purples to white with a hint of purple for the walls and adding some yellow, green and deeper purple accents.





If you're going with a light and neutral wall color then you can really have a field day with your accessories and add some brighter purples that you wouldn't necessarily want on the walls.

Below are some purples I like from Benjamin Moore-





Below is a room with Pratt and Lambert's color 'Admiral' and trimmed with 'Seed Pearl' both from their muted colors collections.


Here is the same room in Pratt and Lambert's ' Coronation' and trimmed with 'Balsa"