THE COLOR LESSON

This is a lesson in choosing the right bungalow paint colors, which can be a huge challenge. Most articles give you a few examples, & the paint manufactureres provide pitifully few Arts & Crafts combinations, but they don’t actually teach you anything about the design history of bungalows or about the use of color to best enhance your home. If you want to learn the how & the why of color choices, stick around & read my series of articles, & then you’ll be able to figure it out for yourself & have a custom color scheme, based on your favorite colors, that you will love.

Read in the order they are presented. Each one builds upon the ones previous.

I’m going to start the choosing bungalow colors lesson with some basic terms, so basic that some of you may know them, but have patience, gentle readers, some may not.  If you run into a term in a definition that you don’t know, look for it on the list. If it’s not there, let me know so that I can add it.  In this lesson, the list is in teaching order, with images, so that the concepts build, one to the next. You can use this list of terms as a glossary in the next articles that will cover more complex colors, explain the Arts & Crafts palette & the final ones that help you choose colors for your own bungalow.

CHOOSING BUNGALOW COLORS- THE BUILDING BLOCKS LESSON

Color
A quality of an object which is caused due to the light being reflected by this object.

Color wheel
A tool that shows every color in the full range of colors, by gradients.

Hue
A true color with no white, grey or black added.

Primary Colors
The building blocks of color- red, yellow, blue. These colors & are cheerful & great for kids’ toys.

Secondary Colors
Combining 2 primary colors in equal amounts gives you green, orange, violet.

Tertiary Colors
Combining different amounts of the 2 primary colors- gives you red-orange, red-violet, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-violet, blue-green. I love this combination of hippy colors!

Remember that at the turn of the last century, they were still using natural materials as tints, so these plastic colors would not have even been possible to create. But, the wheel of the day would have still included a variation of these tones.

You can go on to mix tertiary colors to achieve different colors. The closer that different colors you mix together are on the color wheel, the more compatible they are, and the more intense the resulting color will be when the colors are mixed. The further they are, the more muted & less intense the resulting color will be.

CHOOSING BUNGALOW COLORS-THE COLOR GROUPS LESSON

Cool/Water Colors
Do not include any red. Cool colors do include green, blue, & purple, & variations of those three colors. Blue is the only primary color within the cool spectrum. Greens can take on some of the attributes of yellow & still remain cool. Purple takes on some of the attributes of red & still remain warm. As pastels, they can be more subdued than warm colors, but can be more vivid in the jewel tones.

Cool colors tend to be soothing & calming, like a trickling brook.

Warm/Fire Colors
Do not include any blue. Warm colors are of orange, red, yellow, & combinations of these. They tend to make you think of warm things, such as sunlight, fire, heat & friendliness.

Visually, warm colors look as though they come closer, or advance which is why they’re often used to make large rooms feel smaller & cozier. They are exciting & their use might raise your blood pressure a little!

Pastels
These are colors which have white added to them. They can be primary, secondary or tertiary. Happy Easter!

Jewel Tones
Any deep or vivid color suggestive of that of a gemstone; ruby, emerald, sapphire, amethyst, etc. I have actually seen bungalows painted in these wild colors. I live in Florida & I don’t mind them on a Key West style house. In Key West.

Earth Tones
A group of colors that contain brown, the color of earth or soil. In its larger sense, (& how it will be used here) is colors that are found in nature- soil, grass, trees, berries, flowers, clouds, the sun.

Neutral Colors
Colors that are not found on the color wheel such as gray, beige and brown. Neutral colors are muted shades that appear to lack color but often have underlying hues that change with different lighting. The lighter ones can reflect the colors around them. Though not on the color wheel, they complement primary & secondary colors.

Neutral colors can be complex in tone, as mixing different colors creates unique shades. For example, greige is a mix of light gray and beige, with yellow hues in natural light and gray in fluorescent lighting. (Natural light refers to lighting generated from a natural source like the sun.)

I do not mind an all-neutral palette for a bungalow, but landscaping must be planned to liven it up a little, without overwhelming, & make it look more an extension of nature.

A key issue in color is paint quality.I always recommend Ben Moore because their paints are easy to apply & long lasting. Their colors are well formulated so they are clear & vibrant. They have a great website so that you can search & try colors on a photo of your house, & their customer service is some of the finest in the land.

We are getting closer, but there are still more things to consider before we’re fully submerged in the Arts & Crafts palette.

KEEP READING!

Part 2, COLOR HARMONY
Combining colors to please the eye.

Part 3, THE ARTS & CRAFTS MESSAGE
The philosophy behind the beauty.

Part 4, OLD BUNGALOW COLORS
Color choices when our houses were constructed.

Part 5, WHAT ABOUT PAINT COLORS FOR YOUR HOUSE?
How to use everything you know about color to pick your dream colors.

Part 6, PAINTING YOUR BUNGALOW EXTERIOR CHECKLIST
Making the big choices.

Part 7, IT’S ALL ABOUT THE CHEMISTRY- LEAD PAINT IN BUNGALOWS
Because I think I’m everybody’s mama.

STAY IN THE BUNGALOW KNOW!!!

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