When you’re decorating your home or refinishing furniture, it’s helpful to have a bigger color scheme in mind. How will these pillows, this dresser or these curtains fit in with the room as a whole? If you paint a dresser bright pink, what kind of home decor would that need to compliment?
All of the colors in the General Finishes Milk Paint line are beautiful just the way they are, but when you pair them with other complimentary and analogous colors in the collection, the combinations are inspiring!
Creating a Color Scheme Using the Color Wheel
When you’re decorating, it’s helpful to think about the colors that will work with one another in your space. Let’s take a look at the color wheel to see how certain colors compliment one another.
Primary Colors
The Primary Colors on the color wheel are Red, Blue and Yellow.
These colors cannot be created by mixing other colors together. For example, there isn’t any combination that will give you red. You can get variations of red, but not pure red.
Primary Color Schemes with General Finishes Milk Paint
By using a color scheme with these 3 primary colors, you can create bold and vibrant color palettes. In the General Finishes collection, you could use these combinations of colors to achieve this look:
Think of a red dresser up against a navy wall with a vase of mustard yellow flowers on the top. All of these colors are represented in this beautiful scene:
To visualize a primary color scheme on a piece of furniture, let’s turn to this beautiful dresser by Emily of Mercer Lane.
Emily paired General Finishes China Blue Milk Paint with a vibrant decor transfer. The red and yellow from the flowers provide a bright pop against the blue background of the dresser.
Can you picture a Primary Color scheme a bit more easily?
Complimentary Colors
Complimentary colors are those opposite one another on the color wheel.
These include Green, Orange and Purple. Green is complimentary to Red, Orange is complimentary to Blue, and Purple is complimentary to Yellow.
Complimentary Color Schemes with General Finishes Milk Paint
When you pair complimentary colors with one another, the results are bright and will grab your attention quickly. Here are some complimentary combinations in the GF Milk Paint line:
Here’s what a color scheme like this would look like in a real setting. If this were your home, or one of a client’s, you could paint a dresser in Klein Blue and place it against a wall with a Persimmon-colored pattern, or a rug with Persimmon accents.
Here’s a red-green complimentary color pairing:
Check out how these colors work in this room:
Imagine a gorgeous antique buffet in Tuscan Red with some Van Dyke Brown Glaze Effects highlighting all of the curved details. Hanging above it is a mirror with a Westminster Green frame.
Can you see it?
You can also pair Twilight, a deep and dark indigo, with bright pops of Harvest Yellow.
Analogous Colors
Analogous colors are three colors that are right next to one another on the color wheel. Examples are:
To add balance to an Analogous Color scheme, pick one color as the dominant shade and use the other two for accents.
Analogous Color Scheme with General Finishes Milk Paint
Take this room for example:
The couch is Coastal Blue, The rug is Blue Moon. The pillow and trim are Emerald. This is a Blue, Blue-Green, Green color scheme, all of which are right next to one another on the color wheel.
Create Your Own Color Scheme with General Finishes Milk Paint
Whether you’re putting a space together for yourself, or designing a retail space to sell your painted furniture, following these pairings on the color wheel will give you constant inspiration.
Which suggestion caught your eye?
If you’re ready to begin a General Finishes makeover, you can shop for products in my online shop. If you’re local to me and would rather pick up, use the coupon code “FREESHIPPING” and we can arrange a time!
