Color Holds the Secret to Beautiful Homes (Part I)

Harmony is one concept that may go by different names in different languages and cultures, but the various names would still refer back to the same definition: the arrangement of diverse elements in a way that exudes calm, contentment, and peace. Such an arrangement's amazing in that, although composed of diverse elements, no single element stands out, much like the way a racing shell team of coxless four seamlessly moves forward even without a coxswain.

It's the same in the home. Either the rooms in the house connect to each other, in which case harmony results, or the rooms don't, in which case the rooms leave one with a disjointed feeling. Why is this so? Well, quite simply because rooms are not islands. We may not be aware of it, but as we walk from one room to another, we subconsciously carry the color of one room into another for a few seconds. If the color combination provides the right "bridge," we cross from one room into another seamlessly; otherwise, we are jarred by the absence of the "bridge," we are left with a disjointed feeling.

In more traditional floor plans, rooms may be connected by doors or hallways. In an open-floor plan, rooms may simply flow one into another without obvious boundaries. The secret of successful professional decorators is their ability to see all the common rooms as being related, and to pull the entire floor plan together - using color.

Here's a step-by-step procedure on how to find your color:

Step 1 Realize a few things about color. These are:

• The color you see may not be the same color another will see. One's color perception is laden with personal and psychological variables which vary from one person to another. To one, green might be a cool color, to another, warm, and all because the psychological makeup of one is different from another. Look at it this way: why would you prefer a palm tree metal wall hanging to a fish metal wall d5cor? Yet you do. Why?

• As a result, one may be inexplicably drawn to a color that another might find uninteresting. As we grow older and accumulate psychological inputs, our color preferences change. But each one of us has his own color preferences. Often, we're not conscious of it. Sometimes, we have to discover what it is.

• Compounding this problem is the fact that, in addition to the host of psychological reasons that attend a particular color, there other physical reasons. You might be surprised to find the color you chose at the paint store to be slightly different now that you've taken another look at it when you got home. This is because the lighting in the store might be different form the one you have at home. Moreover, you used a chip rack at the store, which may shift the color.

• No one color - even if it came from the same can of paint-will look exactly the same way in two different houses. This is because the surrounding color in one house may not be the same surrounding color in the other house. Natural light may strike one house differently than it does the other. The furniture, the accessories, the windows, the height of the ceiling, the size of the walls may not be the same in both houses.

With these color basics in mind, you're ready to find your color.