Sometimes you just want your favorite or most inspiring color all over a room and want to skip over the “rules” for using bright or bold colors in small doses.

Sometimes you want an electric color, like lime green, to take control of a room and wake you up. But what’s the secret to making it work?

• Use texture. Using texture on a throw, pillow, or even wallpaper, can add additional visual interest to a room without making the room seem chaotic.
• Use the color on accent pieces, but make them big accents. Lime green is used on both the sofa and the wall behind it here, and it’s not overwhelming. Not all of the walls are green, but the one that is grabs your attention and won’t let go. The two pieces combined create a fresh, welcoming, and slightly quirky living area. There’s no need to worry that the lime green you love so much will be lost in the room. If left to vases, throw pillows, and the occasional knick-knack, the impact wouldn’t be nearly as powerful. Don’t be afraid of using wide swaths of color. Just keep everything else relatively simple.
• Don’t use too many other colors. Skip the idea of accent colors for your main color when your main color is so unconventional. Flip traditional decorating on its head and use neutrals as the smaller accents to create a room that’s unabashedly bright. Don’t stray too far from the neutral palette. The red on the table is all the extra color this room needs.
• Clean lines and little clutter. Ornate furniture styles combined with a bright color like lime green could feel old-fashioned or just become too much to take in at once without feeling overwhelmed. Instead, very few knick-knacks, modern furniture, and no-frills picture frames and vases keep the atmosphere soothing, even in the presence of such a loud shade.

If you’d love to be surrounded by your favorite color, but you’re afraid it’s too bold to use in large doses, it can be done.

Photo credit: jinkazamah

Tweet