Monday, June 18, 2012

Good Colors For Dining Rooms

Use warm colors in the dining room like orange, yellow and pink.








The dining room is more than just a place to eat and entertain. The dining room functions as the core of your home, a center where everyone gathers regularly to enjoy each other, share news and reconnect. Reflect your dining room's dynamic qualities through energetic, joyful and unified color choices.


Choose Stimulating Colors for Dining Room Walls


The time you spend in your dining room is social and active. Wallpaper or paint the area in colors that stimulate and encourage enjoyment of the meal. Most decorators consult a color wheel to make decorating choices. On one side of the color wheel, warm colors such as yellows, reds, pinks, oranges and earth tones dominate; on the opposite side, cool colors rule, including grays, purples, blues and greens. For an entertaining space like the dining room, pick a color from the warm side of the wheel. Bold hues like brick red and banana yellow work well in dining spaces, but aren't always necessary. A too-small dining room may become downright claustrophobic if you use a very bold color on the walls. If you have a more subtle design sensibility or you need to visually enlarge a smaller dining room, choose a warm, but still restrained color such as peach or a buttery cream.


Bringing Dining Room Colors off the Wall


Color coordination is essential once you've established the main color you'll use in your dining room. Choose two additional warm shades from nearby colors on the color wheel for your dining area; these are your secondary and accent colors. Restrict your furniture, fabric and accessory color choices to those three main colors, or close variations. If you've chosen a bold, warm color for your walls, pick a more neutral warm secondary color and use white as an accent; if you went with a neutral tone on the wall, go bolder with your second and third choices. If you already have existing furniture in the room, use those pieces' colors to guide your secondary and accent choices instead of the other way around. Use colors in a 60:30:10 ratio (60 percent dominant color, 40 percent secondary color and 10 percent accent color) for an eye-pleasing color balance.


Considerations: Dining Room Colors for Dieters


Reds and other warm colors like pink and orange stimulate the appetite, making them the go-to choice for chefs that want their family members or dinner guests to eagerly devour their offerings. If you're a dieter, though, painting or wallpapering your dining area a hunger-stimulating color is probably the least appetizing choice on the color "menu." Use calm, yet still inviting, hues such as lavender or lime, which won't stimulate your hunger, yet also won't leave guests feeling "cold."


Dining Room Color Tips


Before you make any hard-and-fast choices about color in your dining room, you should take the room's existing elements into consideration. If the room flows into a nearby living area or kitchen, the spaces should share some color similarities to avoid a disjointed appearance. Unless you plan to change them out, you must incorporate metal fixture colors and wood trim and paneling into your color choices. If you're working with more than one color of wood, you can make them work by repeating their tones throughout the room; for example, if you have a cherry sideboard and pine moldings, make sure you bring in other dark red and light yellow elements to unify the pieces.

Tags: your dining, dining room, your dining room, color choices, color wheel