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THE STUDY OF COLOUR FOR ROOMS

The colour of your kitchen will affect the whole room and how you use it. Luckily colour is something we can study and therefore learn how to make the right choices. By becoming aware of the characteristics of red, violet and blue, you will be able to understand just what the right shade for you really is, and how to match it.

The colour wheel
The first thing to do is to understand how the colour wheel works.
This system clearly and simply illustrates the types of colours that there are, and how they are made. There are three main types:
- primary colours: red, blue and yellow. They are pure, i.e. they do not contain any black, white or other colours. They are equidistant on the wheel;
- secondary colours: are created from the combination of primary colours and are therefore orange (red + yellow), green (blue + yellow) and violet (blue + red);
- tertiary colours: are made from the combination of one primary colour and one secondary colour. For example: orange + yellow = yellowish orange; violet + red = reddish violet.

The dictionary of colours: what does shade mean?
At this point we can move onto the next step: how to describe a colour. The three elements which form a colour are shade, luminosity and saturation.
The shade or hue is the scientific definition of the base "pure" colour, that is to say the one without the addition of any black or white pigments.

Luminosity, in short, establishes the quantity of black or white present. The greater the amount of white, the brighter the colour (for example pink compared to brown).

The temperature divides colours into warm and cold. This characteristic is very important because it affects the impact of the colour on our emotions.
Warm colours are stimulating, cold colours are relaxing.
The level of saturation is, on the other hand, the intensity of the colour. For example a maroon or bordeaux red is more saturated than a flame red.

Colour schemes
The three most well-known and widely-used colour combination schemes are:
- monochromatic: in this case the same base colour is used, choosing various degrees of luminosity or saturation;
- complementary: here opposing colours are chosen from the wheel, like red and green or yellow and violet, resulting in a well-defined and contrasting result;
- analogous: is a composition with adjacent colours, such as yellow and green. In actual fact, they create a homogeneous result because the borders between one and the other are far more merged and they share a common base (in this case, yellow).

Next week, we will be presenting some original ideas to give shape and colour to your kitchen.

The photographs show the following kitchens: Flux (photograph 4), Scenery (photograph 5) and Glam (photograph 6), all Scavolini.

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ON THE SAME TOPIC:

• 22/04/2010 SPRING OF COLOURS IN THE KITCHEN
• 04/01/2010 THE COLORS OF 2010
• 27/11/2009 FURNISHING WITH THE COLORS OF THE EARTH
• 14/07/2009 BATHE YOUR WALLS IN COLOR
• 26/01/2005 CHROMOTHERAPY IN THE KITCHEN?
• 04/12/2003 COLOUR FOR KITCHEN