The colours we choose for our homes are about far more than the latest paint trends – they can have a profound effect on how we feel, too. Here, Pringle & Pringle’s Creative Director Sophie Pringle shares her essential guide to choosing the right colours for your home

It’s one of the age-old decorating conundrums: how do I choose the right colours for my home? Here at Pringle & Pringle, colour psychology is absolutely integral to what we do but rather than prescribing rules, we are always guided by how our clients want to feel in a room.

Colour can have a profound effect on the way we feel, so it makes sense that the colours we choose to surround ourselves with at home can have an impact on our wellbeing.

The GoodHome Report published by Kingfisher and the Happiness Research Institute in 2019 found that 73% of people who are happy with their home are happy with their lives. Colour, in my opinion, sparks joy.

In nature, we are surrounded by colour. Think about how you feel when you’re walking through a lush wood, looking out to sea, or when you see a field of sunflowers – each colour will have an impact on the way you feel. “Colour is an incredibly effective triggering tool. Colour is a factor of our existence,” said Le Corbusier, while the artist Wassily Kandinsky said “colour is a power which directly influences the soul.”

Each colour has a wavelength and our eyes have to adjust to see those colours with longer wavelengths, like red, orange and yellow. To help choose the colours which will support the way you want to feel in your home, we’ve broken the colour wheel down so you know when and how to use certain colours to help you feel happy at home.

RED

Red commands your attention which is why it’s used to attract attention with traffic lights. It is a high-energy colour which can leave you feeling tired or but if used in the right way it can stimulate conversation or physical strength.

A little bit of red in a room has a brilliant effect on it. We have used touches of it in a recent home gym due to its effect on stamina and energy. The interior designer Beata Heuman said in a recent interview that the best bit of advice that she received from her first boss Nicky Haslam was “to always put a bit of red in a room, even if it’s just the flex on a light.”

The artist J. M. W. Turner often used a little red in his paintings because it was necessary to balance the blues and greens – most famously to his seascape Helvoetsluys, to which he added a small red buoy to the centre of the painting as it hung on the wall of the Royal Academy. The effect of the red buoy is at once eye-catching amid the blues and greens, while enabling the viewer to look at them for longer as it provides a counterbalance.

ORANGE

Orange is very rarely described as someone’s favourite colour but it’s incredibly powerful in interiors. Orange has the physical qualities of red but the emotions of yellow. A little bit of orange in a room has the impact of red but it will also feel fun like yellow.

A punch of orange in a room can have a really transformative effect, and can be achieved with art work and accessories. The Kate Boxer print we used in our Cavendish Square office project brought energy and vibrancy to the scheme, while the orange Le Creuset we used in the kitchen of our Battersea project really punctuated the turquoise of the cabinets. Although we don’t always follow the rules of colour contrasting here at Pringle & Pringle, orange and blue will always be a favourite combination of ours.

YELLOW

We think of yellow as the ultimate sunny and happy colour. It has a very long wavelength so it’s very stimulating and optimistic, but too much of it can end up making you feel irritated. When I was at KLC School of Design, we had a colour psychology lecture where we learned that couples argue in yellow kitchens, and that babies will quite often cry more if they have a yellow bedroom.

A little bit of yellow in a room, however, will make you feel happy. You could also use it in a space you move through, like in a hallway. If you want to feel cheerful and stimulated when you arrive home from a hard day’s work, then a sunny yellow hallway will uplift you before you move into another room. In a current project, we’re going to use Farrow & Ball’s India Yellow underneath the dado rail in the hallway with wallpaper on top.

GREEN

Green is the colour of nature and has a shorter wavelength which is why it is thought to be a very restful colour, and is often used to promote stress relief due to its relaxing qualities. Not all greens are created equal, however, and different shades of green will impact your mood various ways. Bright greens with lots of yellow in them have more energy than, for example, an earthy olive green. This is a shade which is really lovely in a room with plenty of natural finishes, but too much of it could feel quite dull.

We chose green seagrass wallpaper for the media room of our Battersea project to promote a sense of nature in a room which was essentially just used for watching television and playing games.

Here at Pringle & Pringle, we believe it’s not about the ‘wrong’ tone but how you use it and the colours you pair it with. So, if you were to paint a whole room in a really soft green, which could feel a little wishy washy, using pinks alongside it in the soft furnishings or accessories would lift it would prevent it from feeling dull and flat. This is why pink and green is such a classic colour combination.

BLUE

Research has shown that blue is the world’s favourite colour. The colour of the sea and sky, blue is a very natural colour, but its myriad tones can also have very different effects. Light blue is very peaceful, making it a good choice for bedrooms, whereas dark blue is mentally stimulating, so it’s a good choice for a work space. In one of our current projects, we have a small children’s study in the middle of the house and are painting it dark blue to promote concentration. A skylight prevents the room from feeling dark and dingy.

Interestingly, the colour blue suppresses appetite, so it’s fascinating that we use it so often in kitchens. Turquoise, however, is a very uplifting colour and wakes you up in the morning so it’s very choice for bathrooms and kitchens.

PURPLE

Purple, in my opinion, is the Marmite of the colour spectrum – you either love it or you hate it. I need to confess here that I’m generally not very good with that classic ‘Quality Street’ purple, but I do love it in nature. My Santos Purple Verbena is one of my favourite plants in my garden for its glorious deep colour. In interiors, I find rich aubergine tones like ‘Córdoba’ by Little Greene very appealing, especially when it’s paired with green. This shade feels plush and dramatic and is an excellent foil to soft pink tones or mixed with burgundy.

PINK

According to The Little Book of Colour, a book I return to again and again, pink is a very nurturing, kind colour, but too much of it can make men feel emasculated. In the book, there is a great example of a football team which painted their opponent’s locker room pink and the resulting negative impact it had on their performance. ‘Baker-Miller Pink’ also known as ‘Drunk-Tank Pink’ is a paint shade used in a number of prisons which have a single pink cell to calm inmates.

Back in the home, pink can feel can feel joyful and evoke a feeling of happiness. We used Sanderson, French Rose, Eggshell on the back of a client’s front door so they could step out of their home with a smile on their face.

BROWN

Brown is a very natural and grounding colour and is used everywhere in interiors in the form of wood. There’s been a definite switch back to those earthy, grounding paint colours; it’s not surprising that dark brown furniture has become fashionable in this last year. The ‘Stone’ collection of neutrals from Little Greene released at the beginning of the year is a great example of how people are craving a sense of dependable calm.

The tone of wood you choose for a room will really affect the colour on the walls so make sure you’ve got a sample of your wood floor so you can see what it’s doing to the colours you put next to it.

GREY

There’s a very good reason why grey was the go-to colour in interiors for such a long time. A versatile colour, it can act as a great background to set off bolder hues. It can also have very different personalities, depending on the tone you choose: calm and sophisticated or bleak and depressing.

In nature, grey is highly nuanced and is made up of a huge number of colours and tones. However, the grey paint produced by some cheaper paint companies has very few pigments in it - it’s just black and white, which is why it can feel flat and depressing. A better paint company will use lots of different colours to emulate nature. A little bit of grey can look very elegant, but too much of it can really suck the life out of a room

BLACK

Black absorbs light and is quite hard to wear, but we use black a lot in interiors – mainly to create a sense of contrast. We did a bedroom which was a very soft green with soft pink cushions on the bed and pink curtains. It could have felt really bland and flat so we put a black chest of drawers in the room and it transformed it by giving it depth.

WHITE

Brilliant white is the only colour that doesn’t appear in the natural world so it’s bizarre that we paint our ceilings in it. White in nature has a huge variety of tones, so it’s very important to think about the natural light you have coming into a room if you’re choosing white paint for it as that will have a huge impact on it.

Here at Pringle & Pringle, we tend to avoid white ceilings. We really like taking the wall colour up on to the ceiling, especially if it’s a bold colour and there isn’t much natural light. We’re painting a snug in this project in Paint & Paper Library Squid Ink – there’s not a single window in the room so we’ve taken the colour up onto the ceiling as you may as well embrace the cocooning feeling. Wallpaper is brilliant on ceilings, and using a gloss finish is very effective.

ESSENTIAL READING FOR COLOUR LOVERS

These are the books on colour I return to again and again:

The Little Book of Colour by Karen Haller (Penguin Life, RRP £10.99)

The Secret Lives of Colour by Kasia St Clair (John Murray, RRP £12.99)

Color: Natural Palettes for Painted Rooms by Donald Kaufman and Taffy Dahl (Clarkson Potter, buy used)

Nature’s Palette by Patrick Baty (Thames & Hudson, RRP £35)

Architectural Polychromy by Le Corbusier

Websites:

A Very Well Mind

Journals

Get in touch and discover how Pringle & Pringle can help you with your project here.

Written in partnership with Studio Home Page