House Paint Color Combinations
Taken from a Rug

Learn how to use an area rug as a starter to help you come up with comprehensive house paint color combinations.

House paint color combinations based on a rug is nothing new. Even professional decorators who are perfectly capable of coordinating paint colors on their own, often use rugs for inspiration when composing decor and paint color schemes for a home.

Room Color Schemes
Based on Oriental Rugs

While Oriental rugs are often extremely handsome, they are usually so intricate in pattern and varied in color that it is not easy to incorporate their entire color palette into a room color scheme. For example, if you pull all the colors from this rug, you will have at least 10 shades!

Unless you are creating an oriental inspired home decor theme, there is no way of using all those colors together in the same room without making it look like a bazaar. So usually you will have to pick two or three principal colors which you particularly like, and base your interior paint color scheme on them.

In planning a room color scheme around an Oriental carpet, you are almost compelled to settle for solid-colored draperies and upholstery materials. Otherwise, your room will become a jungle of patterns. If you buy upholstery fabrics that are textured or self-patterned, your furniture will appear more interesting than if you choose plain fabrics.

Home Color Schemes Keyed to
a Traditional or Contemporary Rug

If the colors of the carpet you choose for your house paint color combinations are too intense for your liking, you can send the rug to a reliable dyer and have them strip it. That way, your interior color scheme will look more subdued and sophisticated.

Once you decide on the rug for your room color scheme, key your walls and draperies to the lighter of the colors. Key the upholstery, draperies and accessories to the other two colors, maybe using grayed/toned down shades of those colors. Take a look at the following example:

The walls and ceiling are painted cream, the woodwork is accented with deeper gold paint color which is also found in the bedskirt.

The draperies, bed throw, shams and lamp shades are deep gray-blue in color. The darkest and most dramatic color of the scheme - red with orange and burgundy undertones - is added with decorative pillows, natural wood side table and a live flower plant.

When using a rug for house paint color combinations, play with color proportions to achieve a balanced effect.

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