How to use colour

Colour is an art in itself, choose the right colours and your spaces look stunning, choose the wrong colour combination and you can make a large room seem tiny or in some cases you could even induce nausea!

Colour Theory

Each colour has a couple of related colours, complementary colours and co-ordinating colours, you may remember doing this in art class at school. For example, grass green has a complementary colour of red. This can be better understood if we replace the the word complementary with contrast, as green and red offer the maximum amount of contrast. However this can sometimes be over-stimulating to the eye and cause the image to jump as your eye tries to decipher the colour information. Let’s look at some examples. The first example shows a red painted wall with a complementary/contrasting colour, the colour green. As you can see it is hard on the eye, especially looking at the edges of the flower where the red and green meet. The second example is of co-ordinating colours that can go well with the same red painted wall. You may choose to select your Wall Glamour product, furniture or accessories in these colours to help broaden the colour pallette for your room.

Complimentary colours

Other ways to create interest to your colour palette is to use colours that are very close but have different tonal properties, as in the example underneath. The tonal variety can make your space interesting without too many overpowering differences in colours. The final way, and a way that a lot of interior designers work, is to work with an accent colour, in this case the accent is the light green. The green, as the above examples show us, is the complementary of red however, changing the tone of the green allows it to sit better into the colour relationship. An accent colour should be used sparingly.

Important info

Each colour represented in the product options are a good representation of the range of vinyl used. However, due to the differences in individual screens it would be advisable to request a colour sample if it is critical that you match a colour correctly. We cannot offer refunds on incorrectly chosen colours. You can request a free sample by emailing samplerequest@wallglamour.co.uk giving your name and address and the colour you are requesting.

If you have a specific colour or corporate colour in mind you can always email us with a Pantone reference or supply us with other colour references which we can evaluate. We will then do our best to match the closest vinyl colour. Due to the limitations of the vinyl medium we may not be able to get an exact match. We do have a number of suppliers and can usually match most colours within a range. Due to the nature of colour matching some vinyls may be more expensive so please call or email us for further details.

When decorating your house it would be wise to read up on the latest techniques and trends, you can do this by reading one of the ‘House Mags’. We currently have 14 publications in the studio, all from this month! and I am sure that is not exhaustative of the home improvement magazine genre. When you imagine each magazine probably has about 130 plus pages of features (200 if you include adverts)…that is a lot of infomation each month!

So we are not going to tell you how to paint a wall or even pick your colour scheme because that’s for you and the House Mags to decide, but what we will do here is tell you how to add to your spaces.

Colour wheel

Colour options

As you can imagine this is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of colour theory so if you want to learn more you can start here and here.

We have 20 colours in our range which can be used to contrast or co-ordinate with your decor or furniture. Check out some of our ideas here. You can even use two or three close colours to create a layered design