HOME & GARDEN: Top 10 tips for using colour in your home

Today, Daniel Nelson of mydeco introduces us to author and interior designer Abigail Ahern's ten top tips on how to bring colour into your home.

Many people are scared of using colour, unsure what colour's work together, how light can affect the colours in a room and so on. We find ourselves in houses painted in beige or taupe with muted furniture, all because colour intimidates us. What a shame! So designer Abigail Ahern, author of "A Girl's Guide To Decorating" gives us her ten top tips on how to bring colour into your home. No more excuses!

"Clever, clever colour. Used correctly, colour not only transforms a faceless room into something spectacular but it can also change our perceptions of its actual shape and size. In addition, each shade has its own psychological quality, so when choosing your palette bear in mind the effect you want to create - warm, cool, spacious, intimate.

Colour behaves in three basic ways; passive, neutral and active. Passive colours are pale and subdued, making rooms feel airy and expansive. Neutral colours, such as white, cream and taupe, offer a great canvas in which to frame things like a stunning piece of furniture. And active colours are typically darker and warmer, creating a more intimate feel. Getting it right isn't rocket science: follow some basic rules and you'll go to the top of the class.

1. Light and natural - Whites, off-whites and neutrals create the illusion of space, so they are fabulous for use in small rooms.

2. Dark with accents - If you're toying with going dark but haven't yet done so then go for it! Bold, inviting and elegant, dark colours transform a shy flower of a room into a head-turner.

3. Going for colour - When it comes to painting our homes we are often a little fearful about moving away from a neutral palette. We needn't be. For fabulous results all you need to do is familiarise yourself with a colour wheel (available from most art shops and on the internet) and decide on a tonal, harmonious or complementary scheme.

4. Tonal schemes can look beautifully sophisticated, as they subtly graduate shades of one colour (monochromatic) or use more than one colour but with the same tone.

5. Harmonious schemes use colours that sit next to or very close to each other on the colour wheel. Harmonious schemes are the easiest for a DIY novice to use as the colour combinations are automatically pleasing to the eye.

6. Complementary schemes are bolder and far more dramatic than harmonious schemes, for example red teamed with green, or plum and yellow. When using complementary schemes, decide which colour you want to feature most - if you use all the colours in equal amounts they will fight for attention.

7. Colour moods - Figuring out the right colours to combine can be a daunting task - you want your room to look stunning but the choice is so vast! First think about the mood you want to create: warm and cosy or cool and calming. With these considerations in mind you'll have the confidence to create a truly individual scheme.

8. Warm colours such as reds, oranges and yellows, give a room a healthy glow. Think oodles of burnt sienna with some damson, raspberry and pink thrown in.

9. Cool colours like lilacs, green and blues tone down strong sunlight. They have the effect of making surfaces recede, enhancing the feeling of space, and are thus ideal in small areas.

10. Combining colours - Good combinations are harder to define, since there are no set rules. One of my favourite colour palettes is nutmeg, stone, pink and pecan and chocolate.

Bad combinations occur when rooms lack visual harmony, rather than when any particular colour no-nos are used - after all, colour choice is extremely personal and one girl's idea of colour heaven is another girl's psychedelic nightmare."

This is an extract from Abigail Ahern's A Girl's Guide to Decorating, published by Quadrille. You can see more of Abigail's work at http://mydeco.com/abigailahern

This post was created for UK Handmade by sofa and interior design website mydeco.com. All the products shown are by designers from the mydeco Boutique.