How to choose furniture color: overview of options and their characteristics

2019-03-01

Author: Belfan

Issues discussed in the material:

• What to rely on when choosing furniture color
• How to choose the color of furniture depending on the style of the interior
• How to choose the color of furniture from a psychological point of view
• What furniture colors are most popular and what are their features?
• How to choose furniture color for different rooms

How to choose the color of furniture? This important question regarding color combinations faces any person who is planning renovation work in his apartment. When decorating the interior of a living space, the solution to this problem cannot be postponed until later, because we want to create a holistic and harmonious composition in the chosen style. Our article is about how to choose the necessary colors for finishing surfaces, furniture sets and decorative elements.

Classic interior

Natural wood furniture is ideal for a classic interior. It goes well with parquet, large windows, columns, and stucco on the ceiling. Furniture made from natural wood is distinguished by respectability, presentability, sophistication, and in some cases even pomp.

Furniture can be made from any type of wood: oak, ash, walnut, maple, birch. Depending on this, it can have different shades.

Due to the high cost of furniture made from natural materials, natural wood can be replaced with cheaper analogues: laminated chipboard or MDF. But you should choose natural shades with a characteristic texture that suit this style.

A classic interior does not accept bright colors, so furniture in this style looks restrained, perhaps even strict, but at the same time attractive.

Light shades

With their help, even a small, narrow room with small windows is filled with light and seems more spacious. Designers recommend furnishing the bedroom, kitchen, classic and minimalist interiors in pastel colors.

Chipboard with gray, cold beige, pearl, snow-white lamination is a godsend for high-tech style. Especially if the facades made of this material are supplemented with chrome fittings. Furniture with such a palette: milky, beige, creamy, yellow - emphasizes the homeliness, romance and vintage style of Provence, shabby chic, Scandinavian. Let's list the six most popular titles.

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Karelian birch

The furniture is a delicate golden color with darker inclusions in the form of smooth lines and knots. Sometimes the design is associated with marble.

Light ash

A creamy grey-beige shade with a smooth texture. In some variations it resembles coffee with milk. Laminate flooring of this color is often installed in apartments.

Acacia

This is the name of grey, yellowish or greenish wood and chipboard material. Dark veins stand out on the surface.

Pine

White-pink or amber texture with brown streaks.

Light beech

Beige-pink surface with beautiful veins.

Milk oak

Surface with matte beige or pearl color and unique wood grain.

In addition to the listed shades, there are alder - a soft pink tone with a silky sheen, apple tree, tansau maple, spruce and pear.

Interior in Art Nouveau style

In the Art Nouveau style, furniture combines simple design, laconic forms and unobtrusive shades. This style is distinguished by unusual shapes, curved smooth lines, and the absence of sharp corners.

The interior in the Art Nouveau style is not characterized by open bright colors; muted, smoky shades are most often used. You can often find furniture with a shimmer or shimmer effect.

The play of light shades in a modernist interior adds a special charm.

Interior in minimalist style

Minimalism is characterized by strict lines, conciseness and practicality. Furniture should occupy a minimum of space, but at the same time fit perfectly into the room and perform its functions.

In the interior in this direction, souvenirs, figurines and other small decorative elements, usually located on numerous shelves, are categorically unacceptable. Let's say elegant, extraordinary decor of significant sizes.

The rigor of this style allows you to endlessly experiment with color. An ideal combination of shades, their brightness compensates for the modesty of the design.

Minimalism is especially relevant for small spaces, where every element should be as functional as possible.

The meaning of careful selection

Properly combined fragments of the spectrum can significantly lift your mood, inspire new achievements and evoke pleasant memories. They advantageously modulate the living space and create a friendly atmosphere in it.

Judging by the photos of the ideal combination of furniture published on the World Wide Web, skillful manipulation of areas of the gamut alone may be quite enough to turn standard housing into real palace chambers.

How to choose the color of furniture

The interior of an apartment or house is a single ensemble in the chosen style. All its elements must be combined and complement each other. The color scheme plays an important role in this. Each shade and their combination has a strong impact on the perception of space, not to mention the fact that color has a strong impact on a person’s emotional state. Thanks to the play of color, a small room can be visually enlarged, you can create a gentle or, on the contrary, aggressive interior, visually divide the room into functional zones and erase all boundaries.

The most favorable are three types of color combinations:

1. Plain type. Involves the use of different shades of the same color.

2. Harmonious type. Combines different but matching colors.

3. Contrasting type. It is distinguished by a combination of completely different colors, but comfortably complementing each other.

When combining several shades in the interior, it is important to highlight the main and additional ones. It is better to decorate the walls in the predominant color, and furniture and accessories in an additional color.

The combination of three or more colors in the interior is a very difficult task and is based on the color palette.

Tips for choosing colors and the best combinations

In well-lit, spacious rooms with large windows, you can safely put dark things of any size. If the room is less than 17 meters, it makes sense to think about a mixed option. For example, black and white facades, where there is a lot of white. Or find reddish-brown things. They will add comfort to the home atmosphere.

Designers advise decorating small living rooms, bedrooms and kitchens only in pastel colors. Against the background of peach, milky, blue walls, a cabinet made of light beech or ash will look almost airy.

It is easiest to combine finishes with them and add bright details to the design. In other cases, this should be done carefully so as not to overload the space. If you want to create a strict design, look for inspiration in a cool palette. In warm weather, when there is not enough sun in the home.

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The interior can be roughly divided into two parts. The first includes the floor, ceiling, walls, window sills, baseboards. The second consists of furniture and decor. The background and furniture must match each other perfectly in color, as they are the most difficult to replace. It is also important not to overdo it when decorating your home, but problems with this are easier and faster to fix.

Maintaining color balance

• The more neutral the basic plan, the more massive and noticeable the setting can be. And vice versa.
• In standard apartments and modern houses without high ceilings (above 3 meters), columns and large areas, emphasis should be placed on coverings that do not attract attention without elaborate patterns. This way you will definitely avoid clumsiness.
• When choosing dark wood or chipboard, light finishing should occupy at least 60-70%.

There is an easy way to understand whether the background in the room is neutral. Imagine it is empty. Will a sofa with velvet upholstery on curved legs and a simple chair fit equally well into it? If yes, then everything worked out.

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We select successful combinations

• White. This is the most win-win material. It looks good with most shades of varying degrees of saturation: soft blue, lilac, brown, red, yellow.
• Black. The classic combination is with white. A softer color scheme is achieved with pastel gray, beige, and blue. Patterns on wallpaper and floors should be discreet. Dark walls with black furniture must be complemented with light curtains, pillows, and frames.
• Wenge. Creamy, vanilla, turquoise, orange, peach wallpaper and decor are suitable for the brown tones of this wood. To blue-black and purple - pink. To all - olive, grassy green, small splashes of blue.
• Nut. Classic tandem - with snow-white or sandy walls. If the furniture has a warm undertone, warm and light shades of brown, red, blue, yellow, bottle green, and burgundy are appropriate in the room. Cold nuts can be combined with light green and blue splashes.
• Red tree. Designers advise using it with a pastel, warm palette to create a cozy interior. More original combinations are obtained with green and purple. Brown is the best companion color for mahogany. If you need to focus attention on something, add a small beige detail.
• Grey. A combination with light green, yellow on the walls, floor or textiles will enliven such a room. Brown, purple, blue, red in small quantities, pink, burgundy, white are also suitable.

Birch, beech and milky oak look beautiful with both light and dark backgrounds. If you want to create a cozy home, add coffee tones, a little blue or red. Gray color will help in arranging a cold, ascetic room. Greenery will add freshness, while blue and burgundy will add dynamism. Intermediate cherry, alder and oak look equally good with a bright and subdued background.

Brown color

Brown shades are considered very warm and deep. It is well suited for a bedroom or rest room - it calms, soothes, and relaxes. But it will also be appropriate in the kitchen, dining room, hallway, living room. Brown color gives comfort to the room and makes it homey and cozy. The peculiarity of this shade is its versatility. Thanks to its laconicism and unobtrusiveness, brown color will adequately complement the interior in any style direction.

A rich shade is especially relevant in spacious rooms, as it visually narrows the space. Brown color goes well with white; it will be perfectly complemented by monochrome beige.

A beautiful combination often found in nature is brown and green; brown and blue look interesting.

Furniture in a brown interior can be made in all shades of this color scheme. Furniture in white, light beige, and ivory looks beautiful. In combination with brown, bright colors look original - red, light green, blue.

Color combination in the apartment

Each room in the house/apartment has its own functional purpose. Therefore, the combination of tones in a particular room is a task no less important than the combination of walls and ceiling.

Living room - for relaxation

The room where guests come and household members relax in the evenings cannot but be harmonious. The combination of furniture with wall and floor decoration should be as successful as possible.

If you choose a light sofa as furniture, it will be combined with light chairs/armchairs. For contrast, you can put a black glass table. Bookshelves in a neutral dark gray color scheme will not stand out and distract attention. For large-sized furniture, it is better to use light wood species.

At the same time, light mustard wallpaper and light laminate with imitation wood can be used in wall decoration. Decor - black openwork chandelier, perimeter lamps, curtains and rug can be in the same turquoise color.

Bedroom - for a good night's sleep

This is a place to sleep after work, household chores and watching TV. Calm colors or deep dark ones (for example, wine) are perfect here.

Option - cocoa color with milk. The bed base is dark cherry and the upholstery is beige. Yellow laminate looks good on the floor; brown or coffee wallpaper with a light print will not distract attention. You can choose a light brown option for the color of the curtains, and beige for the chandeliers.

Hallway - the mood when entering the house

Usually it is the hallway that “sacrifices” square meters for the benefit of the spaciousness of the remaining rooms. That is why light colors are used for its decoration, visually enlarging the room.

The solution is furniture with cappuccino-colored inserts, and the use of wall decoration with vertical stripes. The walls are peach, sand, beige shades. It is advisable to make an entrance door that contrasts with the main color scheme.

Children's room - not without the participation of the child

To choose the color of furniture for the nursery, you need to take into account as many nuances as possible in shaping the baby’s personality or make a decision together with him.

In nurseries, dark colors are not used, which put pressure on the child’s psyche. Good combinations are white + lilac, light green + purple, sand + pink.

When choosing furniture, consider its safety, functionality and not getting dirty: a white table or chairs is not a good idea. When arranging a room for 2 kids, make a bright partition - one of the ways to zone and provide minimal personal space.

The only place where you can use a dark color is a desk. Made from any type of wood, it will last longer in terms of integrity and visual appeal.

Kitchen - for intensive cooking and dining

What you definitely shouldn’t do in the kitchen is choose dark glossy facades. If you really like them and you don’t see others here, be prepared for the fact that you will have to wash them thoroughly, often, and sometimes unsuccessfully. In this regard, white gloss is the most problem-free. The best solution is painted facades.

Designers also recommend taking a closer look at bright solutions for kitchens in order to positively set people up for the cooking process.

The shade option for wall decoration is light green or olive, as well as a warm group of colors. The set can be bright with metal elements if the interior style is modern. For Provence, light pink shades and brown tile floors are suitable.

Bathroom - for comfort

The standard is green, beige and especially blue solutions. But you can go the other way, turning to the orange option: it is combined with many colors (for example, green) and creates a favorable atmosphere in the bathroom.

The colors of furniture and fixtures are traditional white. Floor decor can be used to zone the toilet and bath/shower.

White color

White color is ideal for small spaces: thanks to its lightness and airiness, it visually expands the space. It has a huge number of different shades that are unique and inimitable: snow-white, milky, ivory, gray-white. Furniture in absolutely any design will suit an interior in white colors: from bright and rich tones to classic brown.

A win-win option is to use black furniture in an interior that uses a white shade as a base.

Beige color

The beige shade also serves as a wonderful background. This is a calm, unobtrusive color that is unlikely to get boring. Beige goes well with red, dark brown, azure, purple, and pink. The peculiarity of beige color is that it “requires” bright accessories.

The beige shade emphasizes the white color of the ceilings and the depth of the flooring, especially if it is made in dark brown natural shades.

Grey colour

The gray shade is ideal for the background: it is universal, neutral, cool. It is great for bedroom, living room, office, kitchen. A gray interior “requires” bright accents. Gray color looks good with green, red, blue.

Thanks to its characteristics, the gray shade simultaneously shades and highlights bright colors, thereby creating a cozy atmosphere. If the interior is made in gray, upholstered furniture can be bright or with bright decorative elements, and cabinet furniture can be in white, brown, black.

Living room idea

This room can easily be called the most important room in a house or apartment; the combination of furniture and wallpaper should be thought out in advance, and zoning should be done correctly.

Celebrations of special events, meetings with relatives or friends and dinners with the whole family will often take place here. Nothing should interfere with productive communication, and the environment should bring only joy and smiles to people’s faces.

Important! The living room is not afraid of contrasts; experts assure that it is inappropriate to avoid extravagance in every possible way; if there is little free space, then voluminous mirrors and light colors will help expand the space.

When choosing additions for a room, you can look at specimens of bright colors, yellow, red or red, such an approach is sure to be crowned with success. Violet, blue and green shades can add freshness and airiness to the design; black will help hide some problem areas of the living room, but visually the space will seem smaller.

Red color

The red hue is considered very dynamic and exciting. You should not decorate a living room or bedroom in this color.

It is advisable to use red in the interior not as the main color, but as an accent color: decorate curtains, sofa pillows and decorative elements in scarlet.

Red color goes well with rich shades of green. With such a rich combination, there is no need to focus on furniture; it is better to choose classic dark shades of natural wood or white.

The combination of red and brown looks elegant. This tandem can be complemented with beige color. In this case, it is better to use a beige color scheme as a base, choose furniture in dark brown shades, and use red as an accent.

If you do not dilute the red and brown shades with a lighter color, you may end up with an oversaturated and motley interior of the room, which will soon become boring.

In a high-tech room, white, black and gray will look good with red.

Popular tree

Most people who care about their home know that combining light furniture is quite simple; similar tones harmonize perfectly with any shade, but black, blue and red are considered the most suitable colors for white.

Wood has always been a popular material; such frames are quite reliable and can pleasantly surprise you with their service life.

Among the existing breeds it is worth highlighting:

1. Oak.
2. Cherry.
3. Ash.
4. Beech.
5. Birch.

When choosing from a huge number of presented models, a person must be guided by his own preferences. Oak is expensive, but thanks to such frames it will be possible to emphasize the status of the owner of the home and decorate any corner of the room; the material is often presented on store shelves in brown.

Beech fits perfectly into children's rooms, as it has a beige-pink tone; light yellow birch looks no less attractive.

Black color

Black color is very intrusive and when decorating the interior in it you need to be very careful. The predominance of black tones in a room can negatively affect your mood. But despite this, the black shade is distinguished by luxury and sophistication. By decorating one of the walls and highlighting it with black furniture, you will be able to create a unique interior, distinguished by severity and elegance.

Bright shades look beautiful with black; it seems to emphasize and shade their brightness.

Kitchen arrangement

Real housewives spend quite a lot of time in this work area, so the mood of their household members during meals is very important to them.

To achieve good results at the planning stage, it would not be amiss to use a furniture color combination table; such auxiliary materials have become popular recently.

If the kitchen is small, then as many light colors as possible should be introduced into it; they will visually expand the area and make the atmosphere cozy. Large rooms will allow you to roam around and show your imagination; at the time of arrangement, you can make an extraordinary decision and create a unique design that will delight the visiting guests.

Accessories should be selected in one of the following options:

1. Red.
2. White.
3. Purple.
4. Black.

Make a combination at your own discretion, using a simple but effective rule. First, choose the main tone, and then match the surrounding elements to it, using this advice, you will be able to achieve excellent results.

An interesting idea would be to introduce a pattern onto the kitchen partition, scatter some parts of the image over the entire area, having previously thought through the location.

Green color

Green color is characterized by a calming and relaxing effect. This shade can perfectly act as a background. Pleasant shades of green will create a light and relaxed atmosphere in the room. It is suitable for any room in your home. Furniture made in natural shades of dark wood is ideal for a green interior.

Shades of green such as marsh, grass, and olive are now very popular. They look stylish with white furniture and go well with red shades and burgundy.

Blue color

A rich blue tint in the interior looks slightly depressing, so it requires “fresh” colors, for example, white or beige. Bright tones of blue are suitable for the living room.

When choosing furniture in accordance with the color scheme of the interior, it is important to remember that it should be combined with the main tone and the color of the accessories. In the interior, every detail should emphasize and complement each other.

Spectral circle and seasons

Combining more than three similar shades in one interior will be quite difficult. If such a task is set before an experienced designer, then he will find the optimal solution using a color ring.

The theory of seasons will also be a good help in this matter. She claims that in nature you can find pleasant combinations of different colors by following the color schemes of the seasons. For example, the spring season gives designers such pleasant ideas as a combination of yellow and pink, red and beige.