Your three colors

Good Morning Monday! And you know what that means? The very first post in a never-ending series on How to Decorate with No Time and No Money! I thought about writing a post on all the cheap things you can decorate with...wrapping paper, juice glasses, tissue paper, paper plates, rocks, sticks...but I will get to all of those later. I'll start where I always start when I advise people about decorating their house and, believe me, you can do this in 5 minutes with no money! Woohoo! My favorite sort of chore! Plus it saves you a lot of time and money later.

The first thing you want to do when decorating any space is to pick 3 colors that are going to be the base for your entire house/apartment. Start with the things you can't change. Do you have dark brown wood floor that you are not planning to replace? Well, then brown is going to be one of your main colors. Choose two other colors that compliment that color. I hear many people say that they are not good with colors and they don't know what will look right together. Find a pattern or a picture that you really love and draw your three colors from there.

The second step that will probably take you the most time, is to make a stop at the paint store. Just grab a bunch of paint chips that you like, even ones that you're not 100% sure about. You may love them in the light of your own home. Choose your three favorites and put them in an envelope or paste them to a card.

The trick with this color card is to keep it in your purse so you have it with you whenever you go shopping. Use these three colors in the main areas of your home, and make sure all the rooms that flow off of those areas coordinate with these colors. For example, if you choose red, brown, and orange as your colors that you use in your living room and hallway, make sure that whatever colors you choose in the bedrooms look good with red, brown, and orange. Basically this is the very beginning of a color palette for your house. It doesn't mean that everything in your house has to be one of these colors, but everything should look good with these colors.

Of course, there are those of you out there who really like a neutral or white palette. But I still think you should find your three colors. Your colors can be white, tan, and brown or gray, brown, and tan. To ensure that your rooms have dimension, you want to find three. You can always choose to do a completely white room with wood floors and one red item, but again there are three colors (white, wood, red) even though most people would just call it a white room. Your colors do not have to be equally balanced.

You can definitely have more than three colors! But you should start with three and add to that, making sure that your fourth, fifth, and sixth colors look great with each of the first three. If any of you have seen my house, you know that I never limit myself to just three colors in one room.

Okay, wow, I could go on and on writing all day, but I better save something for next week! Plus you all don't have time to be reading all day - you have to get to the paint store and pick outyour favorite paint chips! And in case you were wondering, I do carry a color card in my purse with me. When I'm running around town with my little munchkin and we find something we like, I whip out the card to make sure the item will work with the rest of the house. Of course, my card has more than paint chips on it, and it's sort of becoming a notebook, but we will get to that later.

Questions?