Color: Energy Made Visible and Beautiful

The long gray winter is over. Bring the glorious colors of Nature indoors to energize your home or office. If you are itching to paint your space, now is the time to do it. New color is one of the best ways to freshen a room.

We will briefly discuss:

• Color and Feng Shui
• Color and Light: how to pick the best colors and tones for your rooms.
• Painting with Intention.
• Feng Shui and Color

Color is a great way of doing “Sneaky Feng Shui”- Feng Shui that is very powerful, yet is not obvious.

Color is one of the Nine Cures. Color is a form of light energy. Each color has a specific energy. Color has a direct impact on a space and the people using the space.

A color will work for you, only if you love the color and feel good with it. If there is a color that you are really drawn to, it usually means that there is a specific energy from that color that you need now.

Colors assigned to the Guas of the Ba-Gua are meant to be used as accent colors, not room colors.  A black accent piece is fine for the career area. But do not paint your front foyer black to match the Gua color.

There are only two “No-No” wall colors for bedrooms: Red and Black. 

If you paint your bedroom red, I guarantee you will have difficulty sleeping.  In a red bedroom you will either have heated arguments or very hot sex, I can’t guarantee which. Pink is a good color, only I don’t know too many men who are “into” pink. A flesh tone on the wall, such as a “beiged” pink, can be a subtly sensuous. Or, try pink sheets for romance or red sheets if you really want to heat things up.

Your teenager may be talking about painting his room black.  Black painted walls literally absorb the light energy in a space. It turns a room into a Black Hole - very depressing.  If there is no way around black walls, then high gloss or gloss paint in black will reflect some light and not be as oppressive.

If you or someone in your family has difficulty sleeping, try bed sheets in a soft color with little or no pattern. Research suggests that our skin absorbs color energy. Those turquoise or Spiderman sheets may have too much color energy.

Color and Light: How to pick the best tones for your rooms.

The choice of paint colors today is limitless, but can be overwhelming.  Here are some ideas to help you select your colors.

A color that looks dramatic on TV or in a decorating magazine may be too strong to live with.  Rooms on television or in print are decorated so they will have visual impact.  Decorating with Feng Shui is about more than looks, it is about how you feel in a space.  People can feel restless or ill in a space with colors that are overwhelming. Save that dramatic color for an accent piece, a foyer or a hallway that you move through but don’t spend time in.

Light bounces off walls. Walls that have very bright or saturated colors will tint the light with some of that color. This explains why everything in a bright green room looks a little green.

Color and light are inseparable. Different kinds of light can make the same paint chip look very different. Always make your final color choice in the room you are going to paint.

Fluorescent lighting in a paint store will make colors look paler and cooler than they really are – when that color goes on the wall it will look brighter and stronger than you intended. This is why your neighbor has a neon yellow house. 

I recommend that you use wall colors that look like they come from nature.  Some paint colors look “synthetic” - too bright, too pale or too grayed down. 

Take advantage of the sample sizes of paints that available now.  Paint a patch on the wall or a poster board 18 inches by 18 inches to really see the color. Do this with several tones of a color to help you make a choice you will love.

Computer matching of color: it is best to bring a sample that is a solid color on a smooth surface. Multiple colors or textured surfaces will cause the computer to blend the colors or tones it “sees”.

New England tends to have “cool” sunlight. I recommend colors with a warm undertone to correct for this.  If you want to work with a blue, a blue that leans toward periwinkle works best.  If yellow is the color you love, find a yellow with a golden undertone. Different parts of the country (and the world) have different kinds of light, so colors need to been selected where they will be used.

With all of the many paint colors available, you can find the best shade or tone of your favorite color for your home or office.

Painting-In Intentions

Intentions in paint: Normand Poulin, a Feng Shui colleague based in Providence, Rhode Island, shared this with me.  If you are painting your own space, make the first paint strokes on the wall words of intention. Paint on the wall with your roller or brush a word like “harmony”, “love” or “prosperity”. Then continue and blend in the word as you paint the wall. You can say a prayer or do the intention ritual while you do this.  You are “imprinting” your intention into the walls and in the space.

Most important of all, love the colors you are using. And have fun!