Think Like an Artist: How To Build A Color Palette

If you didn’t already know, I graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fibers (Textile Design). Hands down my favorite classes in college were Color Theory, Dye, Screen Printing…pretty much any class where I got to paint and mix colors. Here are a few things I learned:

Identify your inspiration: If you truly don’t know where to begin with creating a color palette, I encourage you to look around at the items in your home that are your absolute favorites. It could be a specific image, an item of clothing, a pillow, etc. If your favorite item has multiple colors in it, there is your color palette. I had this incredible professor (her name was Ellis) during the summer sessions at SCAD who taught my dye class. She told us about a free app called PANTONE Studio. You can use this app, take a quick photo of your item, and the app automatically pulls out colors. The beautiful thing about using this resource and the items in your home is that you are basically using a color palette created by a design expert (the artisan/designer who created that item). The photo to the right is from our the Muirwood project. My clients bought this rug years ago that was an investment piece and they want to build the rest of their design off of it. Once we pulled out the colors that resonated with this family they were able to see that these colors showed up again and again in her home (see the tile photo below). So many people naturally gravitate towards certain colors and it is ok to lean into that… it’s your personality shining through. I know I naturally gravitate towards blues, greens, whites, and warm woods. That collection of items is my color palette and it will always trump the current trends in my home.

Consider color psychology: Maybe you love a certain item, but you’re not so interested in painting your entire house to match your favorite hot pink sweater… instead of an object for inspiration, imagine the feeling or mood that you want to convey through your home. Take some time to think about what colors would best represent that feeling. We know through color psychology that color can directly effect our mood. For example:

Red is associated with energy and passion. I love red in a study or book nook. My mom painted her office red and she has two floor to ceiling shelves for books. It makes sense to surround yourself in a color that fills you with the energy you feel when entranced in a great book.

Blue gives us a sense of calm and tranquility. This is why you often see blue in spas, bathrooms, maybe even a primary bedroom.

My point is, if you consider the mood or feeling you want to convey, choosing a color that aligns with that mood could help you select your main color.

Choose a dominant color: The amount of colors you choose for your space will directly affect the vibe of your design. For a more minimal or modern home, I prefer to keep the color palettes paired down as it allows the design to feel less chaotic, more thoughtful, and clean. In a more eclectic or bohemian styled home, choosing more colors makes more sense because it aligns with the feeling of freedom, a collected space, and fun. Once you have your colors selected, choose a dominant color that will be the foundation of your palette. This color will be the most prominent in your design and should set the tone for the rest of your color choices. Consider which color you want for a pop of color. That color will be used maybe in 10% of your room instead of your dominant color which may use closer to 60%. The third color is the connecting color and is used 30% of the time. In a home where a client wants high contrast, it makes sense for opposite colors (think black and white) to be used 60% and 30% and the pop of color (maybe green) is used 10%. However, those same colors used in different ratios will come off much softer (60% white 30% green and 10% black).

Lean into color theory: Color theory is the study of how colors interact with each other and how they can be combined and manipulated to create pleasing visual compositions. It encompasses principles such as color harmony, color contrasts, and color mixing. A color wheel can be a useful tool to help you choose colors that work well together because it shows you analogous, complementary, split complimentary, triad, and tetrad combinations. Analogous colors are colors that are next to each other on the color wheel (think red/orange/yellow or green/blue/purple or blue/purple/red etc.). Complementary colors are colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel (think orange/blue, red/green, purple/yellow). Artists use these combinations to help them create a harmonious color palette and you can use it in your home too.

Something that changed the way I looked at color was taking a Color Theory class and a Screen Printing class in college. In color theory, all of our projects were done with acrylic paint and we had to mix every color. Our paint kits consisted of black, white, a cool yellow, a warm yellow, a cool red, a warm red, a cool blue, and a warm blue. Through this I learned that every color can lean warm, cool, or neutral and that undertone helps to connect your colors. But in my screen printing class, I had a brilliant professor (Jill) who connected the dots in that first color theory lesson. I always thought that cool tones and warm tones just couldn’t be put together in a palette because there wasn’t a common component. But one day my professor took the two colors from my design (teal and orange) and put a dab of orange into the teal and a dab of teal into the orange. Instantly, the colors reflected one another. And now as a designer, I take that lesson into consideration every day.

Create Balance. All of your colors no matter what percentage they show up in a room need to be represented in more than one area. A cluster of color in a single spot makes a design feel imbalanced. Think about styling a shelf. Each cubby of your shelf creates its own vignette and can look great on their own, but when you step back, it doesn’t look right. That same screen printing lesson comes in to play here. If one shelf has green, the shelves around it should also have a pop of green and it should show up in a way that allows your eyes to flow up and down the shelf with ease. Too much attention to one single spot is usually not a good thing. I could do an entire post about balance (and I probably will).

I hope you found this helpful and maybe got a glimpse into the brain of an artist. I could nerd out over color theory, color palettes, color psychology, etc. all day long so if you have any requests to go into more details on any of these topics… just let me know! Now go pick your colors with confidence.