Design Tips From Washington, DC Area Painting Contractor
Our final color combo special takes a mathematical approach to generating color schemes that span the entire color wheel. Depending on how many colors you want to use, the technical name of this color scheme changes (three colors make a ‘tertiary’ scheme, while four colors is called a ‘quaternary’ scheme, etc), so we are going to group these color combos together under the header “fractional”. Fractional color schemes are the trickiest, boldest – and potentially, most rewarding – of all the classic combinations outlined in our series. For more conservative color-matching techniques, check out our monotonal, monochromatic, or analogous specials, or for daring combos that use the simple trick of balancing across the wheel to create shocking matches, check out our complementary and split-complementary specials. For remodelers in the Washington, DC or Northern Virginia area who need some extra help, feedback, or advice with your design projects, please feel free to take advantage of Blue Door Painters free color consultation service!
Fractional color combinations involve dividing the color wheel into even segments, as you would cut slices of a pie. First, decide how many colors you want. Most design schemes involve at least three colors: a main color, a trim color, and an accent color. For interiors, don’t forget that your furniture and accessories will add colors to your composition (and potentially change the effect), and for exteriors, your landscaping, hardscaping, and architectural ‘givens’ (roof, chimney, etc) will also affect your composition, and should be included in the color scheme. So you may be working with more colors than you realize.
Once you know how many colors you will be using, decide the color that you want to start with. Your initial color does not have to be your main color – it could be a given color that you can’t avoid (like roof shingles that you don’t feel like painting), or an accent color that you are excited about – you get to decide where to put each color in the combo – and how much of it to use.
Starting from that color, imagine slicing into the color wheel as you would a pie. Make a slice at your initial color, and then divide the pie into the number of slices equal to the number of colors that you want in your combination. Make sure each piece of the pie is even! Once you are finished, you should be looking at a wheel cut into equal pieces. Take the color at the edge of each slice, and you will have the collection of hues that make up the foundation of your fractional color scheme.
As an example, for a fractional color scheme involving three colors (called a ‘tertiary’ scheme) that takes as an initial color a reddish-brown roof tile, you would divide the wheel into thirds. Your red hue would therefore be matched to a blue and a yellow, perhaps skewed slightly toward blue-violet and yellow-green if your roof tile had an orange tint to it. You could choose a pale, ‘cool’ (i.e., subtly green-tinted) yellow for your siding, and then paint your shutters a similar color to your roof tile (perhaps slightly bolder to make your windows ‘pop’), and save the blue for a bright accent door.
So now you’ve learned six methods for picking colors, and you have hopefully come to recognize the power of the color wheel as a design tool. Always remember, bringing balance into your composition is the goal of any complex color scheme, while keeping consistency is the goal of any conservative scheme. Good luck with your remodeling!