Daring Color Combinations
Daring color combinations almost always make us scratch our heads and think “how’d he/she come up with that?” For us, a daring color combination doesn’t have to be bright or even bold, it just has to be different. They’re inspired by art, nature, a beautiful textile or a tile seen in a far away place. But more often than not, unique interior color pairings are simply tweaked versions of complimentary or classic primary color pairings. We often find color inspiration through art– which it looks like the designer of this peony pink and tangerine orange colored room seen below has done.
Below, a room designed by Sister Parish is daring for its mix of chocolate brown, pale pink, fuchsia and orange.
NYC decorator Miles Redd has built a career on his fearless use of color. In the Manhattan living room he designed below, he combines an icy aqua blue with red and fuchsia. Red and blue are a classic combination used in many interiors but Redd is able to give it a fresh and unexpected spin by turning the blue of the scheme more icy and less “true blue.”
Red and purple is a fabulous, bold color combination. Part of what makes this color pairing below so magical (aside from the incredibly glamorous Ikat tented ceiling and shiny black and white painted floors) is that the red and purple are the same intensity. Had a lighter red or a more lavender purple been used, the effect just wouldn’t have been the same.
In this living room, designer Jacques Grange uses hot pink, forest green (a tweak of the classic red and green color combo) with yellow and orange. Again, these colors live well together because they match each other in hue and saturation.
Katie Ridder is also a genius at creating rooms with unique and vibrant color. This turquoise and golden yellow room is totally unexpected. Perhaps the rug was her inspiration?
Jeffrey Bilhuber uses daring color in a very subtle way. Like in this sitting room, below, where a goldenrod yellow sofa is paired with a burgundy chair (far left) and throw (far right). This is, of course, a spin on the classic complimentary color pairing of purple and yellow. Bilhuber has tweaked a true yellow into a yellow with orange undertones and a true purple into a purple with blue undertones. If you look at a color wheel, you’ll notice that you get an orange-y yellow and a burgundy purple when you move ever so slightly clockwise from true yellow and true purple respectively. It may seem rudimentary, but a lot of inspiration can be gleaned from the good ol’ color wheel!
In another one of Bilhuber’s rooms, he uses an icy powder blue with a vibrant red. This color pairing works because the undertones of the red window treatments are blue. It is also a twist on a primary color pairing. It’s amazing how a subtle tweak of a classic color combination can make a room feel downright exotic.
When we look at interiors in magazines or on our Pinterest boards, we’re essentially looking at these spaces in a vacuum, without any context as to how they were imagined or what the designer’s creative process was. This can be dangerous–especially when the average person tries to recreate a highly nuanced color combination. Nevertheless, we’re inspired to push the color envelope more in 2015 and looking forward to sharing our results with you. My new apartment is our color laboratory! How about you?
More posts from
