How To Choose a Color Scheme

This week, interior designer Natalie Siegel kicks off a weekly design series on our YouTube channel. This week: choosing a color scheme! You can scroll to the bottom of this post to check out her tutorial, but before we get to the professional advice...

Behold the color wheel.

Did you behold it? Good. Now, there are countless shades of colors, but your basic 6 are your primaries: red, yellow, and blue, and your secondaries: orange, green, and violet. For the purposes of keeping this post shorter than the Bible, these are the 6 colors I will offer my thoughts on below.

1. Red

Everybody knows that red is a passionate color, and can make a big impact even in small doses. It screams 'stop and look at me!' like no other hue. Little known fact about Red's cousin Pink: in the early 20th century, Pink was seen as a masculine color due to its membership in the Red family, while blue was associated with softness and heavenliness, a supposed feminine quality. Early Disney princesses (Snow White, Cinderella) wore blue dresses due in part to this logic, and only during the mid-to-late-century did pink and blue switch places to match up with the genders we commonly associate them with today.

2.Orange

Did you know that orange is least likely to be chosen as a person's favorite color? Cheer up, orange, I love you anyway. Being the only color that is both on the warm side of the color wheel and a secondary color, orange avoids the harsh primary qualities of red and yellow by (almost literally) combining the happiness of yellow with the pizazz of red. Being the opposite of Blue, the most popular color, means that frequently the two will be paired.

3. Yellow

The color of smiley faces, sunny days, and cereal boxes; whenever you want to convey 'happy', yellow is your first stop. Red, orange, and yellow make up the warm side of the color wheel, and are specifically recommended when dealing with low-light spaces that need a little pep added to their step.

4. Green

Money, growth, positivity, and health. Green has long been used in the advertising industry to convey nature and good fortune; you'll find it on 'healthy' product packaging at the grocery store, and on the cover of many books featuring financial advice.

5. Blue

Blue is the world's favorite color. If you're not sure what will be a crowd -pleaser, this is a safe bet. It commands a presence in logos across the world. A calming color, it does well in bedrooms. Blue is used frequently in commercials for cleaning products, as it is seen as pure and trustworthy. Speaking of trustworthy, lets play a game: count how many blue ties you'll find at the next Presidential debate.

6. Violet

Violet rounds out the 3 cool colors of the color wheel. This color is commonly associated with royalty, and its deep hues are a staple in the jewel-tone family. Richness and abundance is a hallmark of this color that has just enough blue to not be considered 'too feminine' by the American mainstream.


I am a firm believer in the idea that there is no such thing as an ugly color; there are just colors that work better in some places than others. If a color speaks to you, use it!

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