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Colour your World

Published: 
Sunday, July 8, 2012
While you are at it, see what they are doing at Design Seeds: design-seeds.com. Look at the colours that we can get from these shells laying on the sand.

 

Let me share one of my design secrets and source of inspiration with you. Look around the landscape and observe the colours suggested by Mother Earth. We are not so removed from nature that we cannot find inspiration around us. What I love about this is that it really makes choosing colours for your home an easier task and therefore accessible to everyone. If you love neutrals and want a tan in your entry way, look around you. What is literally lying around our earth that inspires your favourite tan? Might it be the stem colour of the budding bush? Or is it the colour of the bushes in dry season? Or the rich colour of wet sand at the beach? Just choose, and there you have it – the perfect tan (maybe) for your entry way. Many paint manufacturers (especially the international ones available here), have made it even easier to turn the colours that you see and love into the paint colours for your home. Yes, you guessed it – they “have an app!” for that ! Google ‘colour palette generator’ you would find web-based tools that can literally generate colour palettes from your photo. They are really very cool tools… perfect for the “colour-obsessed” designer and homeowner. One such colour palette generator can be found at www.degraeve.com/color-palette . Others exist.  But did you notice all these colours in this photo of the flower?
 
They work by taking a picture with your smartphone of the colour, object or scene that you like, and then the app instantly extracts the individual colours from the photo. Some offer up corresponding paint hues and some give pantone or RGB values. Some may even suggest coordinating colours to create a unified palette. Remember that rich colour of wet sand? You just take a picture of the beach, and it will pick the main colour for you, as well as the greens and blues that would complete the colour palette. Very cool! Be sure to check out the websites of your favourite paint supplier and see if they have similar apps. For reds you may be inspired by a distinct orange flare or glowing embers; the colours of fire and passion and the earth’s molten core. With blues, think clear water, faded American denim, rivers, seas, and crisp blue skies. For the neutral lover in all of us, think pebbles, weathered wood, earthy clay and dry leaves. I have found that nature is never wrong. Even when we see ‘freaks of nature’, it is just something different, not wrong. In nature, many colours mix perfectly and subtly in complex combinations. We are seldom aware of the intricate mixtures and even the impact it has on us. You would be exposed to combinations that you would have never thought of. If the suggestions are not quite what you are looking for, you can always tone down or amp up the colours to suit your taste and situation. So, get a fresh perspective on things with a whole new set of colour palette possibilities for your decor.  

 

womanwise
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