Interior design hacks in yellow, blue and nude

Interior design hacks in yellow, blue and nude

Why Lichtenstein’s colours of 1963 define interior design styles today

Yellow, blue and nude – these colours make Roy Lichtenstein’s work »In The Car« unique, and in a way they also have an impact on our everyday life. They had already found their way into our lives in 1963, the year of origin of the pop art painting, and are trending now more than ever, especially as interior paint colours. Among others, we will take a look at the living room and the bedroom and tell you how to achieve a colourful interior design with a few small tricks.

So let’s have a closer look at the colours yellow, blue and nude. Looking at the colour wheel, you can see that – next to red – yellow and blue are the primary colours. Mixing these two creates the so-called secondary colours.

But let’s continue with the primary colours: yellow and blue work excellently in interior design. Yellow reminds us of the sun and of life itself. It is a warm, vibrant and fresh colour, which can make a room appear bright and inviting. Blue on the other hand creates a refreshing and maritime look. Nude adds a feeling of harmony and tranquillity.

The secret of warm and cool colours

Yellow isn’t just yellow and blue isn’t just blue. Different nuances make these colours appear different all the time and can therefore make a room look completely different too. Interior designers distinguish between warm and cool colours. Cooler nuances contain less yellow while warmer shades are made up of more than 50 per cent of yellow.

Azure, cornflower, blue jeans as well as navy blue, ink blue, sky and cobalt blue are part of the cooler shades of blue. Arctic, aqua, turquoise, cyan and ocean blue are some of their warm counterparts. You are thinking of a holiday right now, aren’t you? The cooler shades of yellow, by the way, are lemon, lime, pale and canary yellow. For warmer nuances you can choose tuscan sun, honey, spice, corn and mustard. But enough about the basics, let’s take a look at the hacks.

Hack #1: Mixing wildly

If you think that it is only possible to either work solely with warm or solely with cool colours, you are wrong. You can indeed combine a cool shade of yellow with a warm shade of blue very well. Or a warm shade of yellow with a cool shade of blue. You just have to use the colours in a selected and targeted way so you don’t overwhelm the eyes. Nude colours come into the room automatically through wooden furniture and floors and add the necessary tranquillity to the concept of the room.

Hack #2: Designing monochromatically

For wall colours, furniture and decoration, combining different shades of one colour family works very well too. In this way a monochromatic look is created, which creates balance in the room. This part of interior design comes across as simple but elegant and stylish at the same time.

Hack #3: Combining with black and white

It is also possible to embed the trio yellow, blue and nude in an interior concept of non-colours, meaning the combination with black, white or both. When doing that, however, one of the primary colours should dominate in order to create a certain harmony in the respective room. You can achieve this by for instance painting the walls blue and then using furnishing or decorative elements in blue, yellow and nude as accents.

Hack #4: Optically enlarging through light colours

You have to be careful when using dark wall colours such as navy and midnight blue because they make a room look smaller. Consequently, you would need to add some light-coloured furniture or decoration to make the respective room look bigger. Floors and furniture are naturally nude most of the time and therefore ideal to create visual calmness in a room. Another possibility is to only paint one wall in this bold colour.

Hack #5: Experimenting with decoration

You can also play with decorative elements such as cushions in shades of yellow and blue. Depending on the season and your mood, you can quickly swap these and create a whole new atmosphere in your home. Regarding the colour concept, the general rule is to go from big to small!  First the colour of the walls, then the colour of the furniture and finally of the decoration. The latter, as said before, can be exchanged the quickest.

Hack #6: Incorporating patterns

If you have incorporated patterns on your walls through wallpaper or pictures, you should keep your interior simple, so you do not overwhelm the eyes. Furnishing and decorative elements should be subtle or pick up the colours of the pattern, which easily creates harmony. One piece of furniture can also be flashy and in a brilliant shade of yellow or blue, but the rest of the interior should be kept plain and simple. This way, that piece of furniture becomes the eye catcher.

Hack #7: Betting on mixed materials

Materials also matter when it comes to colours. Currently, seating furniture with velvet upholstery and natural materials are trending. A mustard sofa and armchair combo can for instance be combined excellently with a nude sisal rug. Planters with sea grass or bamboo lanterns go very well with this and add a little Californian boho chic style to your home.  Dashes of blue can be incorporated with blue stone pots, which add a rustic touch.

Hack #8: Choosing pastel colours

Another hack, when yellow and blue in particular are too bold, are the pastel nuances of the colours. You respectively add white, thus making the nuances lighter. Mustard then becomes pale yellow and navy blue a pastel blue, making your home unlike any other.