Have you considered how to brighten up your home with a burst of color? Choosing what colors to paint your walls can be stressful and confusing. Often it doesn’t turn out as planned. Should you just keep them white? In this post, I talk about how to bring color into your home and the surprising benefits of white walls.
How I wound up with white walls
For someone who loves color as much as I do, you’d think my walls would be painted something other than white. When I owned a house every room was painted a different color. I even went to great lengths to use clay finishes in two different rooms. It felt amazing to be surrounded by color! I vowed to always paint my walls.
So how did I end up with white walls, when I love color so much?
When I moved into the house I live in now, it was the third time I had moved in 6 months. The last thing I wanted to do was paint my walls. I was worn out and just wanted to get settled in and breathe a sigh of relief.
Even though I’ve been here for almost 6 years now, I’ve decided to keep the white because, to my surprise, it actually works really well!
The benefits of white walls
Because I love color so much, my belongings are very colorful. My living room has two multicolored rugs, a green couch with matching chair, both topped with colorful pillows, and the rest of the room is filled with my vibrant paintings and multi-colored mosaic art, including lamps, light switch plates, wallhangings and flowerpots. Everywhere you turn you see color. The white walls do an excellent job of tying it all together.
In my bedroom, I hardly notice the white walls because of all the colors. The duvet cover is purple and the curtains are a different shade of purple, with many other colorful elements throughout the room. The white walls provide the perfect backdrop for all those colors.
When white is too stark
In some spaces, white walls are just too plain and can accentuate an absence of life force in the space. They can feel cold and lonely.
The shade of white also makes a difference, and there are many to choose from. Each will feel and look different in your space, so, when you’re looking for white, look at the wide array of choices.
If you have white walls and painting them isn’t an option, you can often correct the feel of this just by adding a few colorful accents and plants.
When colored walls go wrong
I lived for a month in a house with several charcoal gray walls. This house was also in the redwood forest, in other words complete shade. Charcoal grey was by far the worst color imaginable for those walls. It made a depressing house ten times worse.
A client called me to help her choose the paint colors for her sweet new townhouse. The house had a lot of angled walls and ceilings. The previous owners got creative with painting the walls different colors, but instead of enhancing the beauty of the space, the colors accentuated the awkwardness of the angles.
The yellow that was meant to brighten up the dark space felt creepy. The bold accent wall made a dark room even darker. As part of her Feng Shui Consultation we worked together to find colors that would enhance her space and calm things down.
Her intuition told her that investing in paint would make a huge difference in her new place. It did!
How to brighten up your home with a burst of color
How I help clients choose colors
I take a unique approach when helping my clients choose color. Using a blend of intuition, Feng Shui, dowsing, the client’s personal taste and my background as an artist, I use color to promote harmony in the space and overall well-being in my client.
Looking at your space through Feng Shui eyes, colors can be used to balance the elemental energies and enhance the flow of energy. For example, if your bathroom is in the fire area of your home, all that water in the bathroom can put out the “fire” of your good reputation. Color can be used to correct this. Colors can also be used to enhance different life areas such as prosperity, marriage and many others.
The most important factor is that the colors feel good to my client.
How to choose paint colors for your home
If you’re considering changing the colors in your home start by asking yourself:
- What colors am I drawn to?
- How do the colors on my walls make me feel?
- How do I want to feel? Or what’s missing in this space?
- Do I need something bright and bold? Calm and peaceful?
- After choosing a few colors that bring the right blend of qualities, it works best to then get paint samples and put them on the wall to see what actually looks good in the space as the light changes.
Perhaps your wall colors are working well, but the overall space would benefit from colors elsewhere in your home decor. What small or large thing can you do to introduce color? A duvet cover, a pillow, a vase of flowers? There are many ways to brighten up your home with a burst of color without having to paint your walls.
