Home Decorating Using Analogous Colors

The easiest way for you to visualize what colors would be analogous and thus work well together, would be to look at a color wheel. It is inexpensive and can be found at most stores that have art supplies.

Analogous colors would be any three colors that are in direct contact with each other on the color wheel. So, in this picture you can see these examples

• blue, blue-green and green
• blue-green, green, and yellow-green
• green, yellow-green and yellow

If you follow around the whole wheel, you should be able to find a threesome that appeals to you.

Usually in home decorating and in art in general, using only the three colors tends to give a feeling of incompleteness, or flatness. Adding a fourth color is the solution...
but not just any color! You need to pick a color that is complementary to the three you have chosen.

If you look at this picture, you can see a good example of how to pick the forth color.

The wheel has a white triangle in the center that identifies three analogous colors; blue-green, blue and blue-violet. If you follow the arrow across to the other side, you will see that orange is the complement of the blue. It is important to note that the blue is the color that is common to all of the three colors, so the choice is easy.

What if you want to shift your three colors over one slot so you have green, blue-green and blue? What is the dominant color?

The answer would be Blue... Why?

• Green comes from blue and yellow
• blue-green is from blue and green
• and blue is blue

The complement would be orange.

Using the complement will make the other colors feel richer and take away that flatness, but you only want to use the complement only to the level that it complements, not takes over and dominates.

Here we have blue-violet, violet, and red-violet. The violet is the dominant color because it is common to all of them. the complement would be yellow.

But, what if you only have a touch of violet and the majority of the color you are using in your room is the red-violet. Your choice could be the yellow or better yet, the yellow green because that is the complement of red-violet.

<--------------Red-Violet

So you see you do have options. Just use the color wheel as a guide and make choices based on what color you use as the dominant one