DECORATING IN BLUE - useful tips on how to style blues into your home.
Colour and pattern are powerful elements in decorating. Understanding how colours and patterns work together and how they can influence a person’s mood or alter a room’s appearance is something I am fascinated with. The power of colour is immense. It can enliven or subdue. It can grab your attention or melt into the background. It can make an object appear closer or further away. The possibilities of colour schemes are endless!
Why decorate in blue?
Blues can be calm and quiet, vivid and challenging or dark and enigmatic –drawing on their many moods and qualities to produce beautiful, atmospheric colour schemes.
Blue has a wonderfully evocative quality – like the colour of the sea and sky and conjures up images of elemental vastness and is traditionally seen as the balancing colour of harmony and peace. It also happens to be my favourite colour my go to colour when designing wallpaper.
There is no easier hue to decorate with than blue.
MARINE BLUES
Most blues, whether light, dark or muted work well with warmer contrasts. Yellow and blue are a classic combination. Whereas blue and white has an unbeatable freshness and works from pale blue to dark blue. Whichever quality of blue you use, whether tinted with white to a pale pastel blue or darkened to a deep royal blue, blues blend well together in a scheme.
The Chattering of Choughs in Deco Blue is one of my favourite wallpaper designs and will soon be going up in my bedroom. The blues in this wallpaper are the coolest of blues and have a considerable amount of yellow, green, grey and black in its makeup. There are several blues blended together in varying tones and it underlines its subtle and restful qualities. Hence why I am choosing it for my bedroom.
Pairing a colour scheme based on dark marine blues with either white, gold or yellow will have a similar impact expected from a black and white scheme but with an overall softer look.
DEEP BLUES
Deep blues include strong cobalt blue, the rich blues of lapis lazuli, glass bottle blue and traditional china blues. As blues deepen more caution is needed when you use them in your interiors. They can be intense and demanding but work extremely well with white. You can soften their impact while retaining their dramatic effect by teaming the deep blue with aqua green and turquoise or warmer deep blues with mauve and lavender. For a bright contemporary look you could try teaming up with shocking pink or orange, or they could zing with lime and bright sunshine yellow.
The Legless Birds of Paradise in Lapis Lazuli is a limited edition and only 100 rolls have been printed.
If you decided to use deep blue shades on your walls, then it should be done, oddly enough, in small rooms. The Anteater in Midnight Blue would work fantastically in a child’s bedroom.
BLUE ACCENTS
Neutral and natural schemes can be ideal settings for an injection of blue. Perhaps as a cushion, upholstered chair or vase.
Where the Wild Teasels velvet cushion in Ibis and Indigo has close links with nature and would balance out any interior.
