We recently shared a few posts on Instagram about colour, all built around one simple idea.

If a colour combination works in nature, a painting, or a pattern, it will work in your home.

The comments and DMs that followed sounded a lot like the emails I get.

You want more colour in your home. You just don't know how to mix colours without the room looking chaotic.

So how do you build a palette that's varied and still holds together, especially with three or more colours in play?

These are the three places I go to.

1. Borrow from nature

This is the idea behind those Instagram posts.

Think about a beach. You've got several blues in the sky and the water, white from the clouds, sandy beige, some green from the trees, and the grey of the rocks.

Now picture a typical coastal interior. It's almost exactly that palette.

Photography by Nic Gossage

A forest gives you browns, terracottas and deep greens. A sunflower field gives you strong yellow against whatever else is flowering. Birds and butterflies carry combinations you'd never think to try on your own.

We get king parrots visiting our house every so often. They're bright red and green, which sounds like a lot until you see one up close and realise it works.

You'll find that same pairing in some of the bolder Art Deco-inspired and Victorian homes. It’s also the colour of Christmas.

Look at the strength of the colours too. That parrot is bright green, with bright orangey red on its head and chest.

Keeping both colours at the same strength is what makes the pairing feel balanced. You can also tone both down together, to a dusty pink and olive green, for example.

But you don't need a beach or a parrot on hand. Photos work just as well.

2. Start with an artwork

If you already own a piece you love, especially one going in the room, make it your starting point.

Chances are, if you like an artwork, you like its colours. And the artist has already done the hard part, composing those colours to sit together and carry a mood.

Pull two or three colours from the piece and repeat them around the room in different materials and shades. The artwork and the room start to look like they belong together.

3. Take it from a pattern

Same principle here. A wallpaper, a printed fabric, a rug, or a patterned throw has been designed by someone who already made those colours work as a set.

Photography by Nicki Sebastian

Repeat its colours in the objects around it, and you tie the backdrop to everything in front of it. A floral wallpaper with ochre, sage and rust in it can hand you your cushion colours, your lamp base and your decor.

For ideas, or to buy, these are the names I'd look at first:

• Schumacher
• Cole & Son
• House of Hackney
• Morris & Co
• Sanderson
• Thibaut
• Kelly Wearstler

Once you've collected a few images you love, whether that's a photo of a room, an artwork, or a wallpaper, StyleLens™ can pull the palettes out for you. Upload them to our Room Visualizer app, and you'll get a style report with colour palettes drawn from those images.

You can then use that style to design any room in your home.

Colour gets a lot easier once you stop inventing combinations from scratch. The best palettes already exist in a coastline, a painting, or a roll of wallpaper. Your job is to notice them and bring them inside.

Where do you usually go for colour ideas? Hit reply and let me know.

Cheers,

Reynard

P.S. Colour is one of the design foundations I walk through in my Practical Home Design course. If you want the full process for pulling a room together, start there.