Interior color selection. Principles of color harmonization theory

When we are choosing paintings, furniture, and colors for our home decoration, it requires not only good taste but also for a little knowledge and imagination. It’s important to know some basic color matching principles, and you can create a variety of different combinations of them in your own way.

The Colors

There are many colors around us, which may be so commonplace that we do not even notice them. Nevertheless, colors have a fairly high emotional, psychological, and physical impact on humans. The tendency of man to some colors determines his attitude toward art, fashion, interior; so the choice of color is also a means of self-expression.

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It has also been noticed that environmental colors affect human mood and health: the color can be sensual, viable, expressive or soothing, giving passive feelings. How does color make such impressions?

We see the color from light rays, but the rays themselves are not colored. We perceive the color of these rays through our eyes upon reaching the brain, and each shade is a radius of different length (different electromagnetic energy). The human eye does not recognize all the rays of light, only waves of a certain length (from 400 to 700 thousand microns), we do not see others without special equipment.

Color selection and grouping are becoming more and more important when designing the interior of residential houses and commercial premises. The colors of the environment influence our mood, influence our work and leisure habits, desires and needs, such as hunger, passion, anger, calmness, and the like. Here are some ideas for using these color properties in our surroundings.

Twelve main colors circle

This twelve colors circle shows the basic principles of color matching. They are quite simple; the color circle allows them to be seen and so absorbed better.

In this circle, the order of color progression is arranged in order, so it is a useful tool for creating harmonious color combinations in painting, decorating the interior or creating visual projects.

The main colors

The color circle is formed from 3 basic colors forming an equilateral triangle: red, yellow, and blue. 

The next step is the secondary colors. They are also represented by triangles next to the primary color triangle. This color grouping is called absorbent because the result is that the secondary color absorbs more light than the primary one.

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Secondary colors

When one of the primary colors we mix with another primary color, we get a secondary color. There may be three: green, orange, purple.

Orange (red + yellow)Green (yellow + blue)Violet (blue + red)These secondary colors are also called supplementary.

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Third colors

These colors are created by mixing one secondary and one primary color, so a total of three (since the secondary color consists of two primary ones), for example – blue + violet.

Each third color in this circle will be a combination of adjacent colors.The third colors are six: Yellow-orange, red-orange, red-violet, blue-violet, blue-green, yellow-green.The color sequence in this circle is the same as in the rainbow. Using it, you can find all possible color combinations.

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