Dear Marc: I have heard people say that lighting and colour will affect the overall look of the room. I prefer to have my dining room feel a little more intimate than the rest of the house. How would you suggest I achieve this goal? Kevin B.
Dear Kevin, Before starting your design project, take a close look at how the room will be used and what type of atmosphere you are trying to create. Are you trying to create a traditional dining-room setting where the space will only be used during special occasions? Or are you trying to create a versatile space that you may use every day? Your lighting choice will depend on your answer.
Since you want your space to be more intimate, the colour you choose for the walls will be very important. Different colours create different atmospheres. For instance, if you walk into a space with lots of taupe and brown, your general feeling will be of peace and serenity. On the other hand, if you walk into the same space with the walls painted a vibrant red and sunny yellow, the atmosphere will have been changed completely. The colours now create an atmosphere full of energy and passion. The best way to create an intimate colour scheme is to use warm colours. For those who don't have a clear understanding of colour theory, we'll break it down into simple terms.
In the world of design, we use a colour wheel, which features two different categories: cool and warm colours. Designers use these categories to create different moods in a space. In the warm spectrum of the colour wheel, we find yellow, orange and red. Any combination of these colours will also create warm colours. For example, mixing red and orange to create a red-orange colour will also be categorized as a warm colour.
We can also use cool colours to balance a room that's too warm. Cool colours are blue, violet and green. Again, colours resulting from a mixture of these will also qualify as cool colours. In this particular situation, we're trying to create a warm, intimate setting, therefore, we need to look at using a warm colour scheme.
Once you have your warm colour scheme, we can now look at how lighting will affect the way the eye perceives the colours on the wall. Have you ever bought paint in a store and loved it, but once you got home and painted your entire space, the colour didn't look quite the same? Well, that's because the amount of light exposure a colour receives will alter the overall look of the colour. Paint stores usually have fluorescent lighting, which is the harshest of all lighting. Most walls in our homes don't get that much light, so the paint will look different there.
The best way to find out if the colour suits the space is to take a paint sample home and paint a piece of cardboard. Then put the cardboard against the wall. Be sure to leave the cardboard in place for an entire day to see how the colour changes, depending on how much natural light is coming in the room at different times in the day.
You might love the colour in the morning and hate the way it looks in the evening with less natural light.
Designing a space is about finding out how the objects that surround us affect our feelings and moods.
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Marc Atiyolil is the editor-in-chief of Canadian Home Trends, Canada's Home Decor & Lifestyle Magazine. To submit a question for him, visit CanadianHomeTrends.ca.
