October 2018 | The Sliding Door Company

Color is much more than a tool for giving your home a fresh look; it can also affect how big a room feels, as well affect how you feel when you’re in that room. That’s why color is such an important consideration when it’s time to renovate or redesign. Let’s look at the psychology of color in your home.

Warm, Cool and Neutral

Colors really do have different personalities. There are three categories under which a color’s personality can fall: warm, cool, and neutral.
Warm colors include yellow, red, and orange, as well as combinations of these colors. These shades evoke a feeling of warmth, and not only psychologically. They’ve also been found to raise body temperature, blood pressure, and the rate of breathing. This particular category of color personality can make large rooms feel more intimate, as well as make a small room feel even smaller.
Cool colors are the blue, purple, and green shades, including their combinations. They have a calming effect, most likely due to the fact that they remind us of nature. Just as with warm colors, cool shades affect us physically, lowering body temperature and blood pressure and slowing breathing while causing muscles to relax.
Neutral colors are those shades not found in the cool or warm categories. They include black, white, gray, and beige. Neutrals offer plenty of variety, as they are available in many shades. They can also contain undertones of cool or warm colors.

What Colors Should You Choose?

Now that we’ve explored the personality of color, let’s talk about which colors can be best for certain rooms. The colors you choose will depend on your individual taste, as well as what feeling you wish to evoke.

Yellow is a happy color, but, when overused, it can cause anxiety and fatigue unless it’s a soft buttery shade. Yellow reflects light, making it ideal for brightening up dark hallways. It can also increase the perceived height of a room, so it can be great for a bedroom ceiling.
The calmness that the cool shade of blue evokes makes it a good choice for the bedroom, but it also can improve focus, which allows it to be used in an office as well.
A soft, deep red in the dining room can add lots of elegance, but, because it’s a stimulating color, it can also keep your guests conversing and munching into the wee hours.
The healing and soothing shade of green can work very well for living rooms, where many choose to unwind after a day’s work.

Get More Out of Your Colors

Adding natural light to color will increase its vibrancy, but you can’t get natural light to reach every area of your home, can you? You can when you replace traditional walls and doors with glass sliding doors. Enjoy natural light by allowing it to flow freely through your home with glass products from The Sliding Door Company. Our safe, top-quality products are made to suit your specific needs; find a showroom near you.

Staying on Trend and Designing the Perfect Living Room

Whether it’s your go-to space for winding down after a long day or the place where family and friends gather, your living room should be enjoyable to be in. If it’s looking more tired or dated than it used to, a new personality with these living room design ideas may be what the style doctor ordered.

Anything Goes

The best thing about home design today is that anything goes, which means nothing is off limits for your living room or any other room in your home, for that matter. What fabrics do you love? You can incorporate them. Are you inspired by a certain decade or particular style? Go ahead and celebrate them! Of course, this sounds very easy to do until you do some research and see there are millions of options. Not to worry; just follow these simple starting points, and you’ll be on your way.

Start with Color

The color wheel can be your best friend, instantly revealing the ideal combinations for a cohesive look. The wheel contains the primary colors of blue, yellow, and red. Between them are secondary colors, which are a combination of two primary colors. When a primary color and the secondary color beside it are mixed, a tertiary color is created.
Looking at a single color on the wheel, you’ll notice different saturation and depths of color. This is a very easy way to give your living room a boost of new color and cohesiveness. Now, choose two colors from opposite sides of the wheel. Mixing them and any of the shades below them will give your living room lots of high contrast and drama.
How do you possibly choose the best colors for your living room when there are literally thousands of color combinations? Start with your favorite shades, and research how different color palettes look in a space.
You’ll also want to consider the effects that certain colors have on mood. For example, red and orange are high-energy colors, and blues and greens can help you relax. Adding only small pops of high-energy colors will add interest to your living room without making you feel anxious.

Fool the Eye

Do you wish your living room was bigger or smaller? Does a lack of light make it feel heavy? You don’t have to consider expensive renovations when you know how to mess with perception. Making your living room look bigger is as easy as adding one large mirror or a group of smaller mirrors on one wall.
The reflection will instantly transform the size of your space, making it look much larger than it actually is. Not only that, but mirror sliding doors will reflect the existing light in your living room, as well as add lots of visual interest. How’s that for versatility?
Speaking of reflection, glass is another great tool you can use to keep light moving in your living room. A glass coffee table will accomplish this beautifully, and its transparency won’t add weight to the overall feel of the room.
Another way to create the illusion of a bigger or smaller space is with color. Yellow is a wonderful shade because it reflects light. The same is true of white. If your living room is a high-traffic area, these lighter shades may work better on the walls than on furniture and flooring, where stains and scuffs can easily show.
Floor-to-ceiling shelving can draw the eye upward, increasing the height of your ceiling. Placing straight stripes on the floor with a stylish rug will make the room look longer than it actually is.

Furniture

Chances are that your living room is not the most expansive space in your home. That being said, having big, clunky furniture or several pieces in this space will only serve to make it look and feel cluttered and make you feel claustrophobic. Instead, look at how you can create space. Perhaps some knick-knacks and furniture you’ve placed in your living room would work better in other rooms of your home.

It may be that what you need is a larger piece of furniture like a sectional sofa, which can sit snug against one wall and offer plenty of seating, but not eat up space. However, it’s important to really look at the size of your living room and choose furniture that is the proper scale for the room. Instead of that big, hulking sofa in your small living room, choose one with a smaller stature.
Furniture with exposed legs that allow you to see underneath can both open up the size of your space and offer plenty of seating for family and friends as well. Trading your square coffee table for a round one will prevent sharp corners and also open up the space.

Lighting

The lighting in your living room can also transform its look. To do this, think out of the box. You may have a lamp on your side table that you use for reading, but what about accent lighting? This type of lighting is used more as an accessory than for tasks, but it can have a huge impact. For example, consider placing wall sconces on either side of a mantel or piece of artwork or adding different lamp styles around the room.
Chandeliers are all the rage these days. Available in virtually every style you can think of, today’s chandelier is as appropriate in a bathroom as it is in a living room. A chandelier can distribute light in a way that no other lighting can. Not only that but, if your redesign budget is small, splurging on this attractive addition may be all you need to achieve that big change you’re looking for.
You can also capture, diffuse, and allow light to travel between your living room and the next space with glass sliding doors. This can be an incredibly attractive and stylish option. Working like the trendy barn door, glass doors slide to the side on a track. These doors can also make your living room look larger because they are right up against the wall, freeing up more room.
These doors also serve other purposes as well. They can act like a first, second, or even third focal point in your living room, as well as allow you to instantly change the look and feel of your space. A glass door can act as a wall when slid closed, all the while allowing natural light and all its health benefits to reach to other areas.
Because of the way they sit and operate, glass doors never interrupt the visual flow of a room. Instead, they work with it. If your living room is big enough to divide, the glass door or wall can be an ideal way to split the space as you remain connected with what’s happening on the other side.

How to Get Customized Glass Doors for Your Living Room

Glass doors are easy to get for your home when you know where to go. The first thing you must do is choose the right company. Top companies don’t have customers; they have partners. When the customers are in this role, they can have input at all stages of manufacturing. These doors will be with you for as long as you’re living in your home, so shouldn’t they be exactly what you want?
You also want to work with a company who understands the value that their products bring to a home. Someone who knows there’s a difference between sliding glass doors that are attractive and those that look good and are made with top-quality materials that are inspected to ensure consistent quality in manufacturing.
This is exactly what The Sliding Door Company can do for you. We’ve been turning homeowners’ dreams into reality since 2005. All of the beautiful and innovative products we sell are made with the highest safety and quality in mind. Learn how glass door designs for your living room can add instant and timeless style; claim your free consultation today by calling 888-988-5033.

The Psychology of Color in the Home