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Design Dilemma: What to do with Red (or Orange)

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Are you a lover of red? Or orange? Maybe lime green?

If you are a lover of any bright bold color, it can sometimes be challenging incorporating that color into your home. Sure, red can look nice on a sweater, but how will it look on your walls, curtains, or furniture day after day?

Here’s a quick cheat sheet to incorporating bold color into your home:

Start small. Sometimes the best way to incorporate a bold color is to choose one small place to put it in an otherwise neutral room. You’ll be amazed at how much that color stands out to become a focus, even without painting everything red. or orange or green.  Below, two small red alcove shelves add instant zing to a mostly white room. That’s all the owners needed to do to express their love of that color.

Balance it out. Sometimes, the best way to handle a bold color is to add other contrasting colors that you may also love. In the apartment below, (which is also the apartment pictured in the first photo on this post) several bold colors live comfortably together. Clearly, the owners of this apartment love orange and red, but those warm colors seen in the dining room chairs are also carefully balanced with the cool greens of the couch and blues found in the rug. The effect is colorful and fun but hangs together amazingly well and even feels peaceful.

Paint one wall. Okay, so we know some folks out there regard this as “retro” advice. And yet, painting one wall a bold color is still one of the easiest ways to bring a color into your home in a strong way without totally overwhelming your home. See an example below.

Bring in the colors you love through art. In the photos below, the lovers of bold color field art successfully incorporated color into their homes in a big way, simply by hanging the art. Choosing furniture pieces and accessories that picked up on those colors was a masterful stroke that distributed the color throughout their home but  in a way that enhances the art rather than detracting from it. Since touches of color are repeated in the chairs and again in the bowls resting in the entryway,  everything feels harmonious.

Images: Gene Na on Flickr; Evan Joseph/Prudential Elliman; Apartmenttherapy.com