Above is a collection of images that I’ve gathered from places I visited or just things I’ve stumbled across while out walking. Every day I make a conscious effort to firstly keep an eye out and secondly take pictures of anything that ignites my curiosity – I have a very patient partner! I tend to love natural tones, earthy colours with the odd pop of colour.

A handy tool I stumbled across a few years ago is the Resene Colour Palette Generator; it will turn any image you upload into a colour palette – genius! Here’s the link to it https://www.resene.co.nz/swatches/generate_palette.php

Let’s use this image from my board as an example.

A little background to this image – I took a picture of this vibrant green plant growing like moss around the trunks of the trees. A good friend surprised me for my birthday, taking me to Rangitoto for the day where we hiked up to the summit, sat on an old shed roof and had a lovely picnic (and a bottle of wine of course) overlooking the Hauraki Golf. What an epic view, what an epic day!

Anywho, back on track, here’s the colour palette that was generated when I uploaded it to the Resene Colour Palette Tool, not bad right?

Upload any images you have of colours you love and generate some colour palettes for your interior design project. You can use these colour palettes to inspire each space within your home. But you don’t just want to whack any ole colour scheme into a room, oh no, hold up Franny Fast Boots….

The next step is to assign each colour palette to a space within your home according to the feel. So for example, these green tones produced in my example convey a sense of freshness, vibrancy and creativeness. Therefore, I’m going to use these colours to inspire the interiors in my home office. Remember colour is personal, how it makes one person feel may be different from another so select colour according to how it personally affects you.

Even a simple image with what you might think as one or two colours will produce a myriad of tones you’d never thought possible. From the generated colour palette, I recommend choosing around 3-6 colours for each space. These colours may be used for paint, furnishings or accessories. Whether you use the colours in a subtle way or a more bold and direct way is your choice and depends on your style.

If you’re not sure how much colour to use, reflect back at the images you gathered in the How To Define Your Unique Interior Style exercise (blog # 3) and take the time to review the images. Have they used the colour on the walls? Have they used it on the sofa or just a few accent cushions and decor?

Now every time I walk into my home office, not only will this space make me feel how I want to feel, but it will evoke fond memories of precious time spent with a dear friend. It’s these connections that create a home with heart, that you’ll enjoy for a very long time.

See now, isn’t that way better than painting your room an “on-trend” colour that you saw in a magazine? Ah, that’s a big yes Franny!

Contact Auckland Interior Designer Hayley by heading over to the Strategy Session booking page.

AKA LOU