Living Room Color Ideas

Living room color ideas, color is one of the most potent tools in your design toolbox. It can brighten or darken an area, make it seem larger or smaller and bring disparate parts of your home together into an attractive whole. This can be especially important in many modern houses and condominiums, where open floor plans provide a line of sight between living room and kitchen. The colors you choose for walls, appliances, furnishings and window treatments can bring the two areas together or, conversely, provide a clear definition between them.
Bringing Rooms Together
• When you're working with an open floor plan, unify the rooms by using the same or coordinating colors in all areas that are visible from other rooms. All the walls can be a soft, neutral color, or you can choose different colors in the same intensity to create distinct rooms that work well together. If you prefer to paint all the walls the same color, vary accent colors for trim or for accessories. Color combinations like chocolate brown with pale blue or sandstone with soft yellow are surprisingly sophisticated when paired with granite countertops and burnished steel appliances.
Mediterranean Colors
• Invoke the Mediterranean with warm yellows, soft blues and earthy greens and browns. Buttery yellow walls make a small kitchen seem larger and warmer. Combine them with a colorful tiled backsplash rich with blue, green and brown, and add a chair rail or woodwork in deep brown to give the room an outline of sorts. In the living room, opt for a more sophisticated palette of cool colors that invoke the same aesthetic. Pale blue walls with deep olive green and brown accents, for instance, provide a subtle background for furnishings and accents in rich, warm colors like dusky orange and deep red.
Sophisticated Living Room Palette
• Invoke sophistication without formality with a cool--but not cold--color palette. Soft gray walls offer a neutral backdrop for nearly any highlight color and accent. Warm pearl-gray walls with soft apricot or lemony yellow sheer curtains at the windows for a sunny effect. Add depth to the design with pine green woodwork and trim, and choose furnishings in darker shades of gray or blue to add a finishing touch.
• The single choice of paint color will change the entire atmosphere of your living room. To find the perfect color for your home, start by deciding what you want the room to feel like.
• Making the choice of what color to paint your living room can be difficult because of the myriad of colors available at every paint store. Don't start out trying to pick the right color and the exact shade. Break down the decision process and begin by looking at the big picture. Try to decide what you want the room to feel like. If you want the room to be peaceful and relaxing, think of light, natural colors, such as soft whites, creams, beiges, sage greens and other earth tones that give you a soothing feeling. If you want a cheery room, pick cheery colors, such as bright white, yellow, warm pink or any color that feels sunshiny and happy. For an invigorating, classy room, choose warm, dark colors, from burnt orange to eggplant to chocolate. To make your living room cool and posh, pick stark black, white and cool blues.

No matter how light or dark or rich colors are, about half of them are warm and the other half are cool. You'll be able to tell pretty easily which category each color falls into, but don't get distracted from the way it will make the room feel by how pretty they are. Cool colors will give your living room a more impersonal, peaceful feel, while warm ones create an atmosphere of warmth, hospitality and excitement.