Livelygrey

How to pick colors for your home:

1
Think combinations, not colors.
Picking colors is in fact about picking a combination of colors. One color is no color. Did you know the human eye can't even perceive single colors? We can only see color differences, in other words: we only perceive contrasts. Therefor it's no use fretting over a single color for your walls. Because the million dollar question is: how does that wall color relate to the existing color of your floor.

2
Start with the colors you can't change.
Obviously, a palette is made up of different colors that need to fit together. If you want to paint your room and you have colors you cannot change, like flooring, curtains or furniture, they still need to be part of the palette. Therefor always keep them in mind when picking the rest of the colors. As a rule of thumb, you start with the colors with the smallest range and work towards the widest range. For instance: look at your existing flooring and furniture first, then pick the new curtains, and finish with the wall color.

3
Get inspired.
There are many ways to get inspired. You can search the web. You can pick a flower and match its colors to a paint fan deck. You can take any picture or painting you like and extract colors from it. It's really not that hard. Just pick something that inspires you and match it to paint colors to produce a great palette. A few hints to keep in mind when making a palette:
• Try to include light as well as dark colors. Remember: contrasts are key.
• If you go for greys, pick at least one bright color to accentuate.
• If you go for bright colors, combine it with at least one shade of grey to provide your palette with a neutral tone.

4
Visualize
Once you established at least some idea of a palette and a rough idea of what it should look like, you can start experimenting, using Colorjive (for now, only here). Just try out different ideas. Don't be shy, you can change colors in an instant. Once you know your wall should be blue for instance, you can try different shades of blue till you find the one that works for you.
You can use the software to show the result to your friends and family. After all, they'll have to put up with it.

5
Check your choice
When you use the color codes to order paint in the shop, first take a good look at the color swatch to make sure this is the color you want. Colors onscreen may differ from real life colors. If you are still a bit uncertain, buy a sample or a small pot of paint first. Then paint a small surface to see if it works. And remember: it's only paint. Worst case scenario is repainting. So you can afford to take some chances.

Here's the latest project I'm working on:
Colorjive
Visit the website for more information...

Here's another series of Taj Mahal snapshots. Now at around the same time but on different days.

Light is obviously quite important in the occurence of color. How important exactly can now be assessed through the billions of snapshots that have been uploaded onto the web. Many of those snapshots are from the same landmarks, such as the Taj Mahal in India. Waht would happen if you place a number of these snapshots next to eachother? What does it do to the appearence of the Taj Mahal?
I searched the popular photo site flickr.com for pictures of the Taj Mahal. It didn't took much effort to find thousands of them. That made it easy to identify several hundreds of snapshots of the exact same view. Here's a series of 6. You can tell by the shadows that I assembled them to represent different times during the day, from early in the morning till late in the evening.

Paint the White House Purple?
Yes we can!

Today I came across an absolutely great color design that makes tons of money. Really?
Yes, really.

This report:
internetretailer.com
says proflower.com has the highest conversion rate of all e-commerce sites, a staggering 30%. In other words: one out of three visitors actually makes a purchase.

Looking at the site I'm not surprised. The site is very, very well designed. All the relevant information is readily available and everywhere you go on the site you're only a few clicks away from actual purchase. Very neat.

But also the colors are a very important part of the marketing mix. Here's an analysis:

• First of all take a good look at the homepage to see how much junk it contains: disclaimers, links, more links, terms of use, awards, mission, etc, etc. It's incredible. Even more incredible is that all the information doesn't clutter the homepage. How come?
All the relevant information is highly contrasted on a white background. All the less relevant information is much less contrasted on a green background. Real simple.
The white background 'frames' the relevant information. Within that frame, you see flowers first, 'buy now' buttons next. All the rest hits the eye only later. Why do you see the flowers first? Because they're not white. They are the opposite of white: an explosion of expressive bright colors. Note that this wouldn't have worked on -say- a red background. It's not about the colors, it's about how the colors relate to one another.

• One big button stands out: the big red 'Save' button. And so it should. It stands out not because it is red but because it is NOT green or white.

• The palette is very well picked. The background is green. Duh, it's a flower shop. But how many online flower shops do actually have a green background? Try a Google search and you will see it's actually not that many. And then against the white backdrop of the main frame, the bright colors of the flowers stand out really well.

There's an effective litmus test for good color design: change any color in the design and see what happens. If it diminishes the quality of the design, the color is well picked. If it doesn't make much difference, it's a lousy design. Try that on the design of proflower.com. You will find that each and every color has it's place and function. You simply cannot change any color without diminishing the website. While that may seem quite simple and obvious, it is really hard to achieve.

PS:
I haven't been blogging much lately. Sorry about that. It's not that I have little to say. It's the opposite: I have so much to say that I feel I need another kind of website to do it properly, another way of spreading the knowledge. Stay tuned because I'll announce it here it due course...