There are many ways of achieving a sense of completeness in your home. Walls, floors, architectural details, furniture, and soft furnishings are all important components which can be adjusted to harmonize or provide a splash of contrast color. Everything has a part to play in the overall look, from walls to paintings and small decorations.
Using the same or similar flooring throughout your home is an easy way to impose a sense of continuity - it also creates a feeling of spaciousness. You could, for example, choose natural sisal or a light honey-colored carpet for halls and stairs, vinyl tiles or woodblock in similar colors in the kitchen, with stripped and polished floorboards in the main reception rooms and bedrooms. Rugs can be used to vary the look of each room, and to pick up color from the rest of the room.
Pattern is a good way of creating a color sequence through your home. Fabrics and wallpapers featuring different patterns in related colors, or similar patterns at different scales can be played off against each other. You can pick up an important color from one room and incorporate it as a minor color in the next room. A patterned wallpaper in a hallway can be used to provide the palette for the adjoining rooms.
Architectural details such as baseboards, wainscoting, and picture rails can be used to provide a visual thread that carries color along corridors, through rooms, and even up stairs. White or off-white applied to architraves and other architectural features provides a crisp framing for blocks of color on walls, floors, and ceilings.
Accessories, pictures, rugs, curtains, and other soft furnishings can be used to provide splashes of related or contrast color which underline a predominant scheme, echo the color in an adjoining space, or provide a touch of visual drama.
Bright and Bold
Relatively small areas of color become important in certain contexts. In a predominantly pale room, a piece of bright blue glass at a window will draw the eye and have an impact which is disproportionate to its size. Introducing a new color into a room can entirely alter the existing color relationships. And because the eye looks for the similarities, you can use touches of the same color to set up connections which will draw the eye around a series of rooms so that they are experienced as a single entity. Texture, tone, and even repeated shapes can also be used to suggest unity and harmony.
