Choosing a Colour Scheme for a New Home

Internal house colours are like a personal invitation into your own home. The anticipation every time you open the front door, the excitement of a feature wall, and the relief that the painters have done a fantastic job–that’s the power of colour. 

Sure, the twelve months or so it takes to construct a brand new home is an exciting experience – we should know; with our experience in building new homes in Sydney, NSW. We’ve got a soft spot for paint and all the colours of the rainbow you can mix and match to transform your home.

Choosing internal paint colours isn’t as difficult as you might think. While many first-timers may not feel confident about a colour scheme for their house interior, all it takes is a bit of practice and, a touch of learning, to choose the right paint colour for your home.

Learning About Colour Theory

You won’t need an interior design course to understand house colour schemes for interior spaces. However, there’s nothing wrong with a little extra knowledge about how colours work together; you’ll have more confidence selecting interior colours.

How To Pick Colours?

Picking colours is half science, half art. The science part considers the different spectrums of visible light that humans can see and how they interact with each other, while the art side covers how these colours make us feel.

Choosing modern interior colours requires a balance of both, and the easiest method is the Rule of Three.

Also known as the 60-30-10 method, the Rule of Three requires you to choose a primary colour, then two complementary colours. You make your dominant hue account for 60% of what you paint in the room, while two accent colours make up the remaining 30% and 10%. 

Often the final pop of colour in the 10% is performed with the furniture and soft furnishings, which are easier to change as you and your family grow or tastes change.

Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Colours

The three primary colours are red, blue and yellow. Easily identifiable, you cannot create primary colours by combining other colours, but you can mix them with white and black to produce an entire spectrum of colours.

Secondary colours are combinations of any of the three primary colours. For example, blue and red create purple, blue and yellow form green, and red and yellow make orange.

And finally, tertiary colours are combinations of secondary colours. 

Hue, Tint, Tone and Shadows

Paint colours, or any colour for that matter, rarely fit perfectly into primary, secondary and tertiary colour categories. Instead, many focus instead on the concept of hue. This fancy synonym for colour references all colour combinations, including primary, secondary and tertiary colours.

These hues are mixed with black, white or grey to create millions and millions of different colour variations, each categorised by tone, tint and shadow.

Tint: mixed with white to create a softer, lighter spectrum of colours.

Tone: mixed with grey to produce a slightly different colour.

Shadow: mixed with black for darker and richer colours.

Colour Combinations

This hue mixture of tint, tone and shadow is called colour combinations. How they relate to each other can be classified as monochromatic, complementary or analogous.

Monochromatic: one hue and its variation of tints, tones and shades.

Complementary: colours opposite each other on the colour wheel. Useful for highlighting.

Analogous: colours next to each other on the colour wheel. Choose one dominator colour, a secondary support colour, and a third accent colour.

Many of our clients choose neutral house colour schemes, their furnishings and artworks as colour accents throughout each room to create a unique style.

Researching House Colours

With colour theory out of the way, it’s time to move on to the influential and emotional side of colour–the variation of temperatures, tints, tones, shades, and shadows of an interior contribute to the look and feel of your home.

Take Pictures

With a smartphone in your pocket, it’s easy to research interior house colours when you’re out and about. Anytime you see colours that catch your eye, designs that inspire you or certain textures that feel you with joy, take a quick picture and create a gallery to help narrow down your choices.

Go Online

Your smartphone, or any computer for that matter, is also a portal to the world wide web where you can find all kinds of inspiration. Like the interior design magazines you’d find at your local news agency or those big coffee table books with stunning images of home interiors, the internet is a godsend for inspiration.  

Flick through the latest trends and find something to suit your style.

Pinterest

Staying online for just a moment, we cannot recommend Pinterest enough. If you haven’t started, Pinterest is an incredible tool for creating inspiration boards for whatever you want, including your new interior colour scheme. Easy to use, simple to navigate, and you can create as many inspiration boards as you wish—one for the kitchen, dining room, all the bedrooms, living spaces, and the bathroom.

Follow us on Pinterest to see our ever-growing collection of inspirations for your home. You won’t have to scroll for long to uncover the latest design trends for every room in the house. 

Display Home Inspiration

Visit our Display Homes to see trending colours and hues on the wall in a contemporary home, complete with furniture.

More Interior Design Advice

Transform your home with interior design advice from the Better Built Homes blog. Find the confidence you need to make those critical design decisions. Whether it’s choosing the interior house colours, selecting furniture or deciding between one fixture and another–we’ve got something for every stage of the home-building journey.

Get in touch by calling us on 1300 100 922 to discuss how we can get you on the way to building your dream home, or use our contact form to send your enquiry to the best new home builder in Sydney, NSW!