Mixing Colour and Pattern, dip your toes in.
Some of us have a natural eye for colour and pattern combos and some of us can do it by a long visual process but I find its a decorating style that requires a good amount of narrowing down the right process. I for one start with a colour and then find a base pattern that I use as my jumping point.
I thought I might break down some of the processes ideas I use to start mixing colours and patterns.
So are you reading to dip your toes in the mixed colour pattern waters from Elements at Home
1. Using colours from the same family in varying patterns, scales and sizes.
The blues in this image are all from the same family with a 1 degree difference in light and dark to keep it tonal.
2. Use a small scale pattern as your base solid colour.
A pattern such as small close polka dots or hounds tooth can appear as a solid base colour.
Many people will find these patterns small enough to view as 1 solid colour.
3. Include naturals to break up colour.
These cushions all have a natural background and are sitting on a gorgeous natural base.
They have also used one floral pattern and picked out 2 colours from the flowers and included those colours on the other 3 cushions.
All together they do work best because of the flow of natural bases.
4. Choose patterns that compliment each other. The most obvious choice is floral and stripes mixed together. You will even find a lot of fabric or upholstery houses will make up stripes with their flowers or make a pattern that always includes a complementary stripe or floral in the same weave or colour.
5. Don’t get too matchy matchy or you may head down the almost got it right path and your decor could have a touch of the Peggy Bundy’s about it and no one wants that.
You can see here animal print us usually always a winner with a touch of it in the right place but it could almost go wrong. For me the leopard print wins in this room but the tiger print cushions are almost wrong. Almost.
6. Use the same pattern but on different scale.
Large stripes mixed with small stripes can work in most cases. Personally I would always run them the same way also, this helps keep uniformity.
What do you think are there any tips in there you are now ready to try.
Very interesting. I am probably a bit too matchy matchy but get conflicted with classic versus fashion. I grew up in the 70’s where the kitchen and lino were canary yellow and went out of style pretty quickly but were features unable to be easily changed. Any tips on how you can continue to like the look down the track and if there are any rules to stick to?
Great post – thanks for all the useful tips. Mixing patterns is such a tricky thing to do but it adds so much to our decor:)