Choosing a suitable color scheme for your bedroom to suit your personality isn’t a difficult process, but it is too often ignored or quickly brushed aside by new homeowners. After all, what difference does it make?
When choosing wall paint and color schemes for rooms in their houses, most people go by the “ooh, that’s pretty” color selection process. It’s not necessarily very in-depth vetting, but it does ensure that kitchens, living rooms, bedrooms, etc. are aesthetically pleasing to them. Unless of course, you let your children choose their bedroom color (sorry about the orange, Mom).
Color schemes in home décor reflect the style and personality of the people dwelling there. They also create an opportunity to evoke moods relevant to the activities that take place in a certain room.
Most people are aware that color influences our moods, but what they don’t know are the specifics about how colors are used as tools to help us perceive things, or feel, a certain way.
Hence the reason there is a whole strategy behind how companies carefully select their brand colors. They strive to influence your perception of their company and their products, using colors to identify with positive, relevant attributes. The same principle applies to color schemes in the rooms of your home.
How Your Bedroom Color Scheme is Affecting Your Mood
Now let’s think about where the magic happens- the bedroom. By magic, I mean wonderful, glorious sleep and relaxation. It’s the last place you go at night, and the first place you are when you wake up in the morning.
As soon as you open your eyes, you subject yourself to the colors around you. And because colors affect our mood, your bedroom color scheme is more than just “pretty” …it’s making you feel some type of way.
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Think about the colors you have in your bedroom. Color Psychology [3] breaks down the personalities we mentally assign to various colors, and how they affect our moods:
Red
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Red signifies passion and energy. Its prominence makes it ideal to use as an “alarm” color. Additionally, it’s been linked to some of the strongest feelings such as love, anger, or forcefulness.
Orange
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The warmth of the color orange is derived from the mixture of fiery red and warm, happy yellow. It’s correlated with the feelings of enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement, and stimulation.
Yellow
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Yellow is associated with the feeling of happiness, sunshine, vitality, and joy. It mimics the color of sun-rays, so it can create a feeling of calmness and trustworthiness.
Green
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Obviously the most prominent color of nature, it encourages the feeling of growth, harmony, freshness, and fertility. It has been portrayed as having great healing power, and has been known to symbolize trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, truth, and heaven and produces a calming effect.
Purple
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Since ancient times purple has been associated with royalty and wealth, which contributes to its evocation of power, nobility, luxury, and ambition. Additionally, it influences a feeling of wisdom, dignity, independence, creativity, mystery, and magic.
White
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Think wedding dresses, white is associated with light, goodness, innocence, purity, and virginity. It is often associated with perfection and aside from it being the color of death in certain countries, it has a positive connotation.
Black
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Obviously a very powerful color, black is often associated with power, elegance, formality, death, evil, and mystery. It’s “mysteriousness” helps promote a feeling of fear, and it is often the color representation of death.
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Bear in mind that everyone is different, and therefore may subconsciously react to color in varying ways. But aside from the actual color scheme in your bedroom affecting your mood, their shades can affect how you feel as well.
Bright, vibrant colors are encouraged to be avoided, according to Feng Shui Expert Victor Cheung. “Brighter colors tend to shout out at you, which can amplify your emotions and give you more energy. They also reflect more light, which is known to disrupt your biological clock and keep you awake. If you desire to use bright colors, you may need to dim down the bedroom lights to balance out the brightness. Another method is to use the bright colors as accents rather than the main theme” (Cheung, 2016).
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Before choosing a color scheme for your bedroom, consider what mood you want to evoke in there. Design expert Barbara Jacobs from the Home and Garden Television Network (HGTV) states that when it comes to your bedroom, “Soft, cool colors and neutrals usually create a quieter feeling while stronger colors are for drama” (Jacobs, n.d.).
She also insists that you should assess the lighting you want or use in your bedroom. “Natural daylight shows the truest color; Incandescent lighting brings out warm tones and yellows; [and] Fluorescent lighting casts a sharp blue tone. So, a strong color might be too bright and overpowering when used on all walls or next to a large window, but it might be effective when used as an accent wall with indirect light”.
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Bottom line, it’s totally O.K. to stick with the “ooh, that’s pretty” color-selection process when choosing a color scheme for your bedroom. But before even getting to that process, consider how you want to feel in there first.
Spending a small amount of time planning out your preferred bedroom color scheme can help you go a long way.
