Trick Is To Make Color Scheme Look Planned

Q. We have just been given a 10-foot by 12-foot carpet remnant. It is a true blue color. We were going to use it in a bedroom, but it is such a good carpet we would like to use it in the living room. Our problem is the sofa color. It is a moss-green and beige pin stripe. Our only big chair has an off-white fabric. The walls and draperies are off-white and the fireplace is red brick. Can we make this work? The room is fairly casual and has a country feeling.

A. Most of us want our rooms to be well-planned and orderly because it calms out nerves after a jumbled and confusing day. Here’s a little secret that solves a lot of seemingly big problems: You can use any two or three colors together if you make it look planned (you need things to make your color scheme gel).

My advice is to use some items in your room that combine the moss-green, blue, beige, and brick-red. You may use a group of pillows on your hearth in each of the colors. A vase of silk flowers repeating the colors or a small rug using the color combination will help.

Since you have no flowered pattern in your room, you may choose a fabric in moss, blue, and brick-colored flowers to make a pillow for your sofa, or a skirt for a little round end table.

Try to find a picture for your room that says: “This is my color scheme.” An example would be green grass and a weather-beaten red barn, roofed in beige, under a true blue sky. Usually the color scheme for a room begins with a picture or painting and uses the exact colors in pretty much the same proportion as they are used in the painting. You are merely doing things in reverse by selecting the painting after your color scheme is chosen.

The result will be the same - a well-planned and orderly room working for you.

Design tip

We can create the feeling of having one extra room in a small house by giving hallways, turnaround areas and stair landings their own individual design.

Instead of ignoring them as places we must hurriedly walk through on our way to another area, we can decorate them with the same attention given other rooms in the home.

Here are some designs that could be individually attractive and also be compatible with adjoining spaces:

A hallway bordered in a wallpaper of tiny green leaves, some cut out singly or in clusters, and placed so they appear to be falling to the floor as they lead to an end wall displaying botanical prints.

A stair landing with a little spot on which to stand a tall slim ginger jar containing some bamboo shoots. This arrangement may be planted below an Asian-style wallhanging.

A turnaround area wallpapered in a tiny gold and black stripe, matched with a small black painted chair or stool. Above the chair, display a gold-framed picture of a nighttime city skyline.

What was once merely a thoroughfare area may become a small room, where we pause for a moment to admire as we move about the house.

, DataTimes