The walls, ceiling and floors are often the first palette considered when choosing a room’s color scheme. However, there are situations where this simply isn’t possible. Renting is one the first that comes to mind; sure, you can paint your walls but who wants to repaint them back to their original color when moving out? Or, sometimes budget is an issue. Repainting your living spaces isn’t cheap and it’s a laborious process to tackle on your own if DIY home improvement really isn’t your thing.
Time to Add a Little Color to Your Space? Here Are Easy No-Paint Options
In these cases, you have to use other tricks of the designer trade to keep your interior design both stylish and color-rich. Here are some ways to add a little color without the fuss and muss of paint.
Temporary Wall Paper. Believe it or not, there is a temporary wall paper product made just for people like you. The sticky residue on the back is sort of like the stuff they use for post-its so it peels away easily. It comes in a range of colors and patterns, just like regular wallpaper and you can buy it at a local home improvement store. Temporary wallpaper is on the pricier side but can be the ideal thing to add a single colorful accent wall from which you can build the rest of your design.
Go Big and Buy Art! Here in the Bay Area we have access to both ultra-high end art as well as a wealth of more affordable pieces that are equally as attractive for a fraction of the price. If you’re foregoing paint on the walls, I recommend looking for some larger canvases, prints, photos or 3-D art that will add color and interest to larger wall spaces, as well as a mix of other sizes that can be arranged creatively to fill in gaps around other furnishings.
Peel-and-Stick Backsplash Tiles. Here’s another excellent temporary option for enhancing the color and style of a typically drab space – the kitchen or bathroom backsplash. The average apartment or rental home has zero to offer in this department. You can find these peel-and-stick options at a home improvement stores and cut them to size. Like the temporary wallpaper mentioned above, the tiles are designed to peel away without leaving a residue – or at least nothing that can’t be removed with warm water and mild soap. You can take them with you when you go to use for another project your the next living space.
Tantalizing Textiles. Now that we’ve covered the walls, let’s move on to textiles, which include upholstery on your furniture, window treatments, accent pillow shams and so on. These are all things that can be taken with you when you go and – outside of upholstery – are relatively easy to switch out periodically to keep things interesting from season to season. For example, the walls in this industrial living room were intentionally left white. Therefore, we added a woven textured coffee table, a rich cabernet-upholstered chair and throw pillows with complementary geometric patterns for splashes of color.
Don’t Neglect Your Reflections. Finally, don’t forget the importance of mirrors and/or mirrored furniture. When hung and placed smartly, your mirrors and reflective furnishings will amplify and multiply the color in your space.
If you aren’t a fashion or design aficionado, the word Pantone may mean nothing to you. But for those of us who are in the design industry, Pantone is a Mecca of sorts. Each year, the forward-thinking folks at Pantone predict the colors that will trend in the fashion and design world for the following year. So while they have just released