Decorating your Living Room with Pastels
The pastel living room has become all the rage over the last few years. Using pastels helps create a room full of clarity and sophistication, without becoming monotonous.
Creating a warm and welcoming living room can be so easy, thanks to the soft color pallet also known as pastels.
In today’s article, we’ll talk about these colors, what they are, and how you can use them to decorate your living room.
Living rooms painted with dark, sombre colors have had their day – the time of pastel living rooms has arrived.
What are pastel colors?
This is probably the first question that popped into your head when you started reading this article.
Pastel colors are those which are made predominantly using white in order to make them slightly paler.
There are three main types of colors, according to the level of saturation. Firstly, there are the saturated colors, consisting of strong, bright colors.
Then there are the pastel or soft colors. These are lighter than the saturated colors and have a different hue.
Finally there are the pale colors. These contain white more than any true color and so have a far paler hue.
Pastel tones can really be any color with a lot of white in them. However, the most common pastel colors used in decoration are:
- Lilac
- Baby pink
- Pale blue
- Mint
- Tiffany blue
- Yellow
- Gray
The best thing about these colors is that they work perfectly together.
They are traditionally used for decorating children’s bedrooms, although today they’re used to decorate any room in the house.
Why use pastels to decorate your living room?
It’s no secret that light colors create a sense of brightness in a room, and visually make the room feel bigger. The same goes for pastel colors, which also have the added benefit of bringing a touch of sophistication to your home.
They convey a sense of peace and harmony.
These colors give rooms a soft, tranquil feeling, which is why for many years they were often used to paint children’s bedrooms.
Today however, this is not just a color pallet for children. As we’ve already mentioned, pastels can be used for any type of room. You can follow some of our basic rules to prevent your room from looking like a child’s room.
How to decorate a room with pastels
In this section, we’ll talk about how you should use pastel colors to decorate your living room.
As we’ve already said, there are certain rules you should follow to make your living room look like an adult room.
Just the right amount of color
To decorate a living room with pastel colors, you have to add just the right amount of color. The living room is a family room, made for everyone, so it can’t look like a child’s bedroom. Firstly, it’s important to decide which elements of the room you want to be painted in pastel colors.
The key to pastels
The key to using pastel colors is that they should be strategically used on specific elements around your living room.
Like for example, on decorative items:
- Lamps
- Vases
- Paintings
- Pictures
- Coffee tables
- Poufs
- Couches
- Textiles
Remember not to go overboard when it comes to decorating your living room with pastels. It’s also important to keep in mind the combinations that work best, which we’ll discuss next.
Combinations
You can combine pastels with various different colors.
Firstly, white is a color which goes perfectly with pastels. In fact, you’ll notice than in almost all pastel living rooms, white is the base color.
Secondly, you can combine pastels with each other. The most important thing to keep in mind is that you should choose one color that is softer than the other. For example gray with tiffany blue, yellow or mint. Generally however, any combination of pastel colors looks great.
One of the latest trends in decorating living rooms with pastel colors is to combine them with metallic or geometric elements. Using copper (either traditional or rose copper) is very popular.
Pastel colors also go great with natural elements, like pale woods, wicker or jute.
Conclusion
As you can see, decorating your living room with pastel colors offers endless possibilities. Inspired by its frequent use in Nordic and vintage styles, pastels are really versatile and not only look great in living rooms, but also in rooms like the kitchen, bathroom, or bedroom.