Color blocking in interior design is using two or more colors that contrast or complement each other to bring attention to or away from specific areas or features in a room. This technique can use multiple colors, but two is the most common. The blocks of colors can use straight and long lines, or curvy lines that wrap around and section off parts of a room.
There’s a few situations where color blocking not only looks great, but causes a dramatic effect for the space including:
- Creating focal points
- An affordable alternative to wainscotting
- Visual horizons
- Separating zones and distinct spaces
- Making rooms feel taller
- Widening rooms
- Accent walls
This design technique is one of the easiest and most affordable ways to transform a space because you only need paint and painters tape to ensure the lines remain strong and don’t have drips of color bleeding through. Although sometimes drops of color can look nice with modern design aesthetics. Here’s how you can use color blocking to create a desired effect in your spaces.
Creating Focal Points
Color blocking a room can help define areas for specific tasks. A bedroom or game room with white walls could have a pink or yellow color block in a wavy pattern that climbs to its highest point in a corner that is used for a reading or relaxing look.
The corner can have a bean bag chair or bird's nest chair, a small bookcase, and a side table for setting a drink or the book on. These items grouped together are all part of a reading nook and use the Gestalt Principles of Interior Design so our minds automatically know this is a reading corner.
Wainscotting Alternative
Wainscotting is where you use crown molding to section a room with a long horizontal line, and create picture frame-like design features to add texture and structure to a room. In addition to looking nice, the crown molding can protect your walls from dings and scratches when chairs, display cases, and people bump into it.
However, wainscotting takes time and can be expensive because you have to pay for crown molding, saws or tools to cut it, painters tape to make sure colors don’t bleed together, and the paint to cover it. With color blocking you can create similar effects by painting the color blocks in which adds similar effects, it just won’t have the 3-D textures as paint is flat and crown molding has depth.
Visual Horizons
A taller visual horizon (where your eyes look in a room naturally) can be done using color blocking to define where the top part of a room should be. This keeps your eyes focused downwards and lower in the space. By having a higher horizon line you can reduce cavernous feeling rooms with high ceilings like a great room, vaulted ceilings in ranch homes or cabins, museums, and other tall spaces.
The color blocking here can keep the lighter color higher with the darker color lower like white up top and dark grey below. Then you can keep the color blocking palette in tact by using furniture and other items including area rugs, couches and chairs, coffee tables, and side tables. By doing this you’ll help to make the space feel more cozy and connected as the person won’t feel tiny under a cavernous ceiling.
Zone Separation
If two people share an office at work, or two kids share a bedroom at home, color blocking can be used to divide the space and give each their own personality. It can also be used as a tool to create designated areas for sleep and work in a studio apartment, or dining, relaxing, and other functions in open floor plans.
The contrast can be either complementary or it can be across from the color wheel. If you go with two separate color blocking patterns, its easy to mix and match on the designated sides.
If one side of the room is color blocked with green walls and blue carpets, you could use blue and white or silver furniture on this site. Then on the other side if you color block with blue carpets and grey or white walls, use the other colors for the furniture and accents. It keeps the feel cohesive while giving clear boundaries into the other person’s space.
Two colors dividing a room can also be complementary to make the room feel like it has more energy and vibe.
Make Rooms Feel Taller
Vertical lines can make a room feel taller, and color blocking is one of the easiest and most affordable ways to do this. You can use tall and slender furniture as well as floor to ceiling drapes to help create the effect. Large color blocked boxes or striped patterns going up and down the wall can fine tune the effect and its impact, and this can go well with matching bookcases or shelving.
Make Rooms Feel Wider
Horizontal lines can make rooms feel wider by bringing your eyes from one side to the other vs. focusing on the vertical features of the room, and color blocking can complement long console tables and book shelves, low backed sectional couches, and other horizontal lines you’re using to expand the space.
Accent Walls
A final form of color blocking in interior design is creating an accent wall and incorporating the same colors from the accent wall into one of three options.
- The decor items like throw pillows and a blanket on a couch, or an area rug under the coffee table and a decor item on top of it.
- The furniture itself so the room uses a double drench design technique.
- The other architectural elements like window frames or curtains, crown molding, wainscotting, and even doors.
By adding an accent wall to the room you create a focal point that helps break up monotony and can bring eyes away from spaces that look too large or too small. Accent walls in large rooms keep eyes focused on a set area for sitting or eating.
In small spaces, when the accent wall is a lighter color and the contrasting color is a darker one, try balancing the space by using the light color on the window frames and other elements helps to make the space feel larger. The goal is to help your eyes focus and keep moving across the space vs. on the tiny size of the space.
Color blocking is an easy way to make a room feel cohesive. And if you’re only using it on the walls, it is much more affordable than wainscotting or buying artwork. This design technique can help to make rooms feel larger or more cozy when used correctly, and at a fraction of the cost of a full renovation.
