Open floor plans, whether in a suburban home, a condominium, or an apartment, allow architects to maximize the feeling of space without increasing square footage. But that doesn’t mean you have to paint all of the connecting spaces one color. Give each area its own personality by choosing two or three colors that work well together and use them in varying amounts (such as on walls, furniture, and accessories) from room to room.
5 Ways to Connect Rooms with Color for a Seamless Look Throughout Your Home
Make open-concept spaces feel cozy and connected with these clever color tricks.
Jessica Bennett is an editor, writer, and former digital assistant home editor at BHG.
Updated on September 2, 2022
While some prefer a unique color scheme for each space, creating a cohesive palette that stretches across rooms can help give your home a more intentional look. Linking rooms with color can also encourage better flow between spaces that are separated by closing doors. And if you can see from one room into another, such as in open floor plans or combined entry and living areas, the color relationship between those rooms affects whether your living spaces feel harmonious. Using unrelated colors in adjoining rooms can make the house feel like a disjointed series of spaces, while colors that relate to each other draw the eye from one room to the next and create visual continuity. Follow these tips to create a whole-house color scheme that blends seamlessly from one room to the next.
Create Flow with Color
In a house with an open floor plan or one in which rooms connect through wide openings, it’s even more important to choose colors that relate to each other. In this situation, the challenge is to give each room its own identity according to its function and still achieve a feeling of unity. Repeating similar colors or materials in small details, such as window treatments, fabrics, or wall decor, can help form a subtle link between spaces for an overall cohesive look.
Use a Thread of Color Between Rooms
To give each room its own color personality while ensuring a united look, try using a single hue as a theme that runs throughout. This trick works even if you love using lots of varied colors. Just choose one color, such as white or a versatile shade like navy, that appears in the color schemes of each room. Consider choosing woodwork as your unifying element and repeat the same color or finish on baseboards, door frames, window frames, and molding at the ceiling.
You also can achieve a feeling of continuity by limiting your palette to two or three colors that you use in different amounts and applications throughout the house. Each color can be used in different values and intensities to produce a wide range of effects. For example, paint your lower kitchen cabinets a dark stormy gray, then choose a lighter shade of gray for the adjoining living room’s walls.
4 Tips For Paint Color Harmony
Harmony. It is such a happy word, associated with smooth musical notes, cohesion and all things working together. When it comes to interior decorating, harmony is something everyone wants to achieve in their home. It takes a little practice, but by learning to use paint colors, textiles and textures correctly, you’ll have your Washington, DC area home putting out a smooth, cohesive vibe before you know it.
To point you in the right direction, our painters have put together 4 helpful painting tips for creating cohesive paint color flow.
Start With The Basics
Gone are the days of “matchy-matchy” color schemes where everything is mauve and turquoise. Eclectic is in, but that does not necessarily mean that anything goes. There is still a trick to creating cohesive flow and to pull it off you need to understand what is at work creating the visual style in your home. Start by ensuring that the interior paint on your trim is the same as it moves through your home. This is a color that frames each room and connects each room, mismatched trim will break up your space. Next, pay attention to the colors and patterns currently at play in your space, rugs, furniture and knick knacks as they are all a part of your color flow. Be strategic with your large ticket items, and choose colors that will be team players no matter where you place them.
One easy way to ensure that the wall paint in your home flows well from room to room is to select paint colors from the same color family. Once you’ve decided on a color, vary it by using darker and lighter shades throughout your home. You can use similar accent colors in each room or mix it up by giving each room a signature accent color. Either way you go, the foundation of cohesive wall paint will ensure a color-harmonious home.
Build A Color Team
Start by choosing three or four paint colors you love that work well together, then alternate how you use them in each room. For example, say you love aqua, gray and yellow. Paint your living room gray with yellow and aqua accents, paint your kitchen yellow with gray and aqua accents, and do your powder room in aqua, adding in yellow hand towels and gray tile. This way, your colors will flow throughout your space and work in harmony while adding a fresh and unique ambiance in each room.
Most paint brands have ready-made paint color schemes, guaranteed to work well in your Northern, VA home and flow cohesively from room to room. If you are looking to repaint an entire home, either all at once or room by room, this is an option that takes all the guesswork out of choosing paint colors.
There you have it, everything you need to select paint colors that will connect your space and create harmonious color flow. If you still need a little help in the paint color department, call our in-house color expert for some extra advice. Or, if you have your paint colors nailed down, schedule an estimate today and allow our team of painters to cover your Fairfax, VA home with a dreamy new color scheme.
