We all have that friend who manages to put together fantastic outfits and their home is effortlessly cool and on trend, using colours that you personally wouldn’t have thought ‘worked’.
That is where learning the basic of the colour wheel can come in handy.
I have always been a person who believes that you really only learn the rules, so that you can learn how to break them. All the things I learnt through my training, at some point or another, I have had to break. Let’s be realistic, sometimes, it is because you don’t have the quantity of of a particular bloom in stock, or maybe the client’s budget just doesn’t allow it. In business, you can’t simply give things away free, so if the budget doesn’t allow it, it doesn’t go into the bunch, and as a consequence of that, I may have broken one of the fundamental rules of floristry.
Besides that, in nature, there is far more than simply primary, secondary and tertiary colours. Most thing has a combination of colours, and therefore sometimes your colour scheme is dictated by the elements in the feature/focal.
The colour wheel: is an illustrated organisation of the hues that can show the relationship between primary, secondary and tertiary colours.
Primary colours: a group of colours from which all other colours can be created by mixing. They can not be created by mixing other colours together. The Primary colours are Red, Blue and Yellow.
Secondary colours; a group of colours that are produced by mixing equal proportions of two primary colours. The secondary colours are Violet, Green and Orange.
Tertiary Colour; is a colour that is created by either mixing two secondary colours, or one primary colour with a secondary colour. Tertiary colours are: yellow–orange (amber), red–orange (cinnabar), red–purple (magenta), blue–purple (violet), blue-green (teal) and yellow–green (chartreuse).
Colours are often referred to as ‘warm’ or ‘cool’. Warm colours make us think of sunshine, warmth and fire. Warm colours add warmth to spaces, and can make rooms feel smaller and more intimate. They can be thought of as ‘happy’, ‘bold’ and even ‘angry’ colours.
Cool Colours are thought to calm and soothe. Cool colours like blue, green and light purple are used to make spaces seem bigger, and remind us of water and sky.
Fool Proof Rules:
Want to know how to create colour schemes throughout your home or using your wardrobe? There are several fail safe ways to put together a winning combo.
Monocromatics: If you like to keep things simple, use one colour along with lighter and darker variations of the colour.
Analagous Colours: These colours sit next to each other on the colour wheel, and go well together simply because they are in the same area/zone. Simply choose three colours that sit next to each other on the wheel. You will find one colour will be the dominant colour, which tends to be a primary or secondary colour.
Complementary Colours: These colours sit directly opposite each other on the colour wheel. Used together, they look more vibrant and intense than if they were used alone or with other colours as they provide the strongest contrast possible for each colour. This is why they are also referred to as contrasting colours or opposite colours. These pairs of colours when mixed, cancel each other out; producing a white/black.
Split Complementary Colours are a variation to the standard complementary colour scheme. Here, you choose a base, and then use the colours adjacent to its complement.
Triadic Colour schemes use three colours that are equidistant on the colour wheel. They tend to be quiet vibrant (due to the use of three different colours) even if you choose to use pale or unsaturated versions of your hues. To have success using a triadic colour scheme, allow one colour to dominate, and use the other two as accents.
Tetradic Colour schemes use set sets of complementary pairs to create a rectangle on the colour wheel. There is generally still one dominate colour, with the other three used as accents.
So before launching into a full repaint and redesign of your home, take a minute to look at elements you have that you like, and if there are any key pieces of furniture that may already determine your colour scheme. For instance, you may have at special painting in your main living room, which as you can see below, has a colour scheme within, that you can utilise throughout the rest of the room.
Creating at any level should be fun, so don’t take it too seriously. Start small and work your way up.
Til next time,
Fwf x
