Using Bold Colors

Layering is the key to decorating and designing with bold colors. Interior designer Brian Patrick Flynn presents several layering tricks using bold colors in this video by Ethan Allen:

When decorating with bold colors, you just need to make sure you have a lot of depth, texture, and multiple shades of similar colors.

In the media room featured in this video, the two main colors are teal and pink, but instead of using just one shade of pink and one shade of teal, this color palette includes medium pink, hot pink, magenta, bold teal, muted teal and several sea greens. When all of these colors are put together, the layering gives it a bit more depth, so that it doesn’t look like you bought everything the same day.

The sofa, coffee table and rug are off-white; the neutral takes down the intensity of the bold colors.

Artwork doesn’t need to match the color scheme. A mix of modern art, prints, maps, antique mirrors and pencil sketches in the gallery wall add color, texture, pattern and sheen and also helps break up the colors in the rest of the room.