We’re here with another request post today, answering a question posed to us by one of our readers. A few weeks back Rashmi asked me to give suggestions on how to select upholstery for a room. How do we put together our colours and patterns and bring together all the furnishing of a room? So here we are today with ‘How To Create A Colour Scheme For Your Room’.

This isn’t something I learnt in college and I don’t think there is any right way of going about it. I’m sure each designer has their own way in which to create a colour scheme for your room. But today I’ll show you in short steps how I usually do it. Let me take you through this process using two projects we recently finished as examples.

How To Create A Colour Scheme For Your Room:

The first example we’ll start with is my parents’ living room. This one is a riot of colours and we used a whole lot of colours and patterns in all the furnishings without letting it look over the top.

So how did we choose these particular colours? How did we select the various patterns? And how did we make sure it all came together well?

Start With The Rug

The only thing mom said to me when she asked me to revamp their living room was that she wants it colourful. She didn’t have any particular colour in mind or any particular style. So how did we then begin?

I started with the rug and here are a few good reasons for that. The rug is one of the largest pieces in the living room and will help to set the tone of the room. So we can build the colour scheme around it. Also, unless you go for a custom made rug there are fewer options in rugs than fabrics and cushion covers. You can always select furnishings to go with the rug. It is a little more difficult to find a rug that goes perfectly with your fabrics.

What I did was to send her a few ‘colourful’ rug options and asked her to pick her favourite. This is the one she chose.

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The rug is beautiful and automatically gave us our colour palette. Blue, red, orange and yellow… that’s a whole lot of colour to start with and would fulfil mom’s wish of a ‘colourful’ living room.

Other Large Surfaces

Next we went to the other large surfaces we had in the room. The largest would be the curtains which cover one entire wall of the living room. We knew we wanted the overall feel of the living room to be light and airy instead of dark and moody. So we selected a white fabric with a light blue embroidered pattern to go on this entire wall.

The second large surface was the panel along the dining table. The rug gives us the ‘blue’ on the living side, but our dining side was all white. I thought a dark blue wallpaper on the panel will help to carry over the blue and tie in the dining area with the living. And so we selected this beautiful wallpaper to go there.

The last large piece left was the 3 seater sofa. This lies right next to our bold and bright rug. So we went light on the sofa to balance out the rug. A gentle, self pattern with a hint of gold to go with all the gold on the rug, this was a perfect fabric for our sofa.

The Smaller Pieces

Next came the wooden sofa set. This includes a 2 seater sofa and two single chairs which are only partly covered in fabric. The legs and arms are carved in wood. We didn’t want to go dark on any of the pieces surrounding the rug since the rug itself is very dark. But I thought we could use a little pattern on this since there is less fabric on it. We selected this off white fabric with small motifs in blue and orange… colours pulled from the rug.

That left the beautiful single chair in the corner. Since it was just one piece I went with a bold floral pattern on it. This way the pattern doesn’t begin and end with the rug.. we carry it to other pieces of furniture too.

We also had two ‘balcony’ chairs near the window. Our dining and living were predominantly blue thanks to the rug and the wallpaper. I thought it would be a good idea to make these predominantly red, since that is the second boldest colour in the rug. These chairs lie by themselves to one side, so we could again use a bold pattern here without worrying about it clashing with other patterns around. Notice how the colours in the fabric are so similar to those on the rug, except that the background here is white.

That left the dining chairs. Since the only colour we had on the dining side was blue, thanks to the wallpaper, we thought we’d use the fabric on the chairs to carry over the other colours to the dining side too. This stripe was light, as a balance to the wallpaper and yet had all our colours on it. Also, the stripe was a great contrast to the paisley, where a floral would have caused clashing patterns.

We now had all our fabrics selected.

Selecting Cushions

Once our fabrics are done, we pick the cushions and throws to close our selections. While fabrics are selected by going physically to a furnishing store and going through a zillion catalogues till we find what we’re looking for, I usually look for cushions online. Since we have selected our fabrics, our colour scheme is already decided. So I start by saving pics of every cushion I like that fits into our colour scheme.

Next, I open a Power Point file and put all these cushion pics on one page. I’ll keep all the pieces that are gelling well and going with each other. Any piece that sticks out like a sore thumb, or looks out of place, I’ll delete.

Decide Which Fabrics The Cushions Will Work With

We will eventually place each of these cushions on a piece of furniture. And we know what fabrics we’re putting on the furniture. So I then pair up cushions with the fabrics and see what looks best. For example, I thought dark cushions will contrast well against the white on the wooden sofa. So we went with one dark blue cushion on each of the single chairs. But four dark blue cushions all in a row made me think of children lined up in school uniform. So I went with the oranges and blues on the 2 seater sofa in the middle.

And here’s how that turned out.

Since the 3 seater is large we we added a bit of every colour on it. On one side we did a solid blue with a white and red pattern, while on the other we did a solid red with a white and blue pattern.

And this is how that looks.

Which left the bold floral fabric on the single chair. We thought only a deep, dark blue would show up against the bold print, and here’s how this corner looks.

That’s how we worked on the colour scheme and upholstery selection of this living room. We started with the rug to decide our colour scheme. Then picked fabrics for the bigger pieces, gradually moving on to the smaller ones accordingly.

Start With The Furniture

Do you remember our Modern Tropical Living Room? The look and feel there is exactly the opposite of the living room above. It’s almost monochromatic with textures playing a far greater role than colours and patterns.

How we created the colour scheme of that room was also completely different.

This was one of our inspiration pics for that living room. (You can see more inspiration pics on our introductory post to this living room)

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The emphasis here was on materials and textures. And we stuck to this brief when selecting our furniture. As you can see, our final selection included teak wood, live edge wood, cane, iron, leather and bone inlay. We had simple, clean lines on the furniture pieces but a whole lot of different materials and textures in use.

And we didn’t want our fabrics to take away from this. The emphasis had to remain the textures. That, and the off whites in the inspiration pics, helped us make our fabric selections.

Then The Furnishings

There was only one colour in all our selections.. that’s if you can call ‘off white’ a colour at all.  All our fabrics were off white, with a gentle self pattern.

Our curtain had a little bit of sequin work, again a way of adding texture. Embroidered leaves did the trick on the sheers.

More off white patterned fabrics went on the sofa, two chairs and ottoman.

(Psst.. notice that the ottoman fabric in this living room, seen in the lower right corner, is the same as the sofa fabric in our colourful living room above. See how the same fabric can be used in two completely different colour schemes and yet fit in perfectly in both!)

We selected a rug that fell perfectly into this monotonous, self patterned scheme of things.

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We did break this monotony too. This time though, it was not with colour or pattern, but by using different materials. We used leather on the dining bench and a cork finish on our TV panel.

And that’s what our final selections looked like when put together.

A leather cushion on our cane chair…

A hint of black… a cozy throw.

And here’s how our tropical living room came together.

That Rounds It Up!

These are only two of many ways you can create a colour scheme for your room. Just as I started with a rug, you could start with a large painting, or one show stopper piece of furniture, and build your colour scheme around it.

What really helps to create a colour scheme for your room is to use a mood board while doing it. We have a great post on how to make a mood board, step by step on the blog. Do read that to give you ideas.

As always, if you have any questions and comments, do write in below and I will try to answer them the best I can. Also, post requests are always welcome. Let me know what’s been your nagging decor dilemma and I will try my best to help.

Until next time,