Find your #truecolors

I did what terrifies most parents.  I married an actor and an artist.  A successful, highly motivated and extremely gifted actor/artist, but an artist all the same.  I think everyone should have an artist in their life.  They see things from different perspectives.  AND he DGAF what anyone thinks.  I used to care what I looked like, how I dressed, and how I expressed myself.  But then he gave the license to be me.  I can tell you I'm much happier adopting this way of thinking.

The biggest epiphany I've had in my life was that there are no right or wrong answers.  And this applies to everything, from weight, to style, to life choices, and to interior design.  However, the worse thing you can do is make choices based on fads.  Just a few years ago #MillenialPink was a thing.  Don't get me wrong, I love love LOVE pink.  I wear pink glasses every day of my life, I even splurged $750 at LA Eyeworks for these babies, I love them so much (yes I'm talking to you, glasses, even though you are pink and now somehow passe, I will love you for eternity).  But let's talk about you, reader.  What are your...

Go to your closet

Yes, that's a direct order.  Go in there now and take a good look.  Take it in.  Your closet.  This is you.  These are the clothes you have collected over the years.  Now pick out the non-denim, non-black-and-white clothing.

What do you have?  Your happy colors.

It's the dress you wear with a splash of your favorite scent when you need a little pick-me-up.  The sweater that takes the gray out of the day.  The jazzy shoes that show you are not all business.  And chances are you have had many opportunities to jettison these clothes, but you've kept them around because... they make you happy!

So now you have your colors... now what?

Time to mix and match

Let me break it down and go back to kindergarten.  Do you remember primary colors and complimentary colors?  Well every color on the wheel is made up of a primary color and every color has a complimentary color to go along with it.  Yellow and purple, blue and orange, green and red.  These colors excite the brain, stimulate the senses.  Vincent Van Gogh was an expert at using complimentary colors (partly because of his eye condition).  That's how you get "Starry Night."  If you want to have an exciting, vivacious space, you choose colors on opposite sides of the wheel.

Similarly, if you want to mellow out a space, you pick colors close to each other.  Monochromatic spaces are not necessarily gray, white and black.  They are just composed of very similar shades of the same color.

How does this relate to your happy colors in your closet?  Well, if you're me, you will want to use every color that makes you happy.  But if we're talking you and you don't want to be crazy like me, you can use some of the colors and then balance it out with softer shades. 

For example, this is the planned color palette in my living room:

Pretty crazy right?  My husband, who is currently looking over my shoulder as I write this (because, you know, COVID), is going to need some serious emotional counseling should this be it.

HOWEVER, I balance these CRAZY colors and patterns with this:

And then lots and lots of white, much like the museum wall behind that GORGEOUS Van Gogh masterpiece.  This will work.

Don't believe me?  Stay tuned for the result!