The impact of colour to your home

Colour can be your greatest ally in three very different instances where property is concerned. Firstly, colour can help you transform a new real estate into a home that speaks about you and about your lifestyle.  Secondly, colour can help you transform surroundings that have become boring and lacklustre after so many years of living in a place.  Thirdly, colour can help you turn Your Malta real estate around in preparation for a sale.

Wherever your real estate in Malta is situated and whatever its character, your choice of colour can say a lot about it, increasing or decreasing its potential whichever phase of home ownership you are at.  Let us start from the beginning…

 You have just bought a new house…..

• The property belonged to somebody else up to some time ago and you are moving in to make it your very own. If you are faced with rooms painted in different colours, it is worthwhile making a plan on what you need to put into each room and how you need to change these colours, if at all. Having a different colour to each room may sound somewhat interesting as each room takes on the character of its colour. The blue room, the pink room, the green room…. Each will have an individual character that is supported by individual accessories that echoe its key colour.

• If the property has one colour throughout, you might want to revive and refresh this colour, choosing one closer to your lifestyle.  Choosing which one colour to use throughout can be simplified by starting off with the cleanliness of white. Liven this up when you use your accessories and furnishings to transform the room with the character these help to imbue.

• Neutrals are exceptionally good to offset dramatically coloured furnishings, upholstery and décor. If you tend to like walls that are covered in paintings and sculptures, then your best bet is a neutral shade. If your walls will probably be lined with books, then a neutral shade will not compete with those variegated book spines.

 You have been living in your house for a long time and you can feel it……

• Things have become boring and staid and you pine for novelty. Changing the colours of your walls may become complex if you already have a fully furnished home. However you can transform your home one room at a time, which means you will have less on your hands and only one concentrated project at a time. Work on one room systematically by first of all de-cluttering.  All furniture has to move to the centre of the room and be covered with old sheets.  Subtle colour changes can transform a room in the more ways than one, so changing beige to buttercup yellow may not seem much of a change, but once a room is completed, the colour difference can be a tangible effect.

• Instead of whitewashing all the walls, you can opt to wallpaper one or two walls or to put in an impact wall. This kind of treatment to walls can be of benefit to eventually help you redecorate an entire room around the key colour of the impact wall or the key colour scheme of the wallpaper. Many times people will take inspiration from these to transform the accessories in a room and even change the character of the room.

• Alternatively if you are stuck for colour ideas, pick one item out of the room which you really like. It may be a curtain fabric, a ceramic item, a painting, or even a tablecloth. Look at the colour combinations to inspire yourself on how colours match and what intensity you can go for. When you visit a paint shop take this item with you or at least take a picture of it to guide you on your new colour choice.

 You have decided to sell your house and this means you want out.

• But it also means that you must make the house look as exciting as possible to tempt buyers. One of the best ways to give a cleaner look to a house is to paint the walls. This is not a good time to change colour schemes but you can tweak colours a bit in order to revive them and the rooms they live in.

• Subtle transformations can help your home look that much better, so adding or removing soft furnishings, accessories and small furniture items can free up space and redirect you to a new colour scheme.

Colour evidently plays a large part of our home life.  It can affect your mood and those of others.  It is thus always recommended that you seek professional guidance for certain changes that you may want to make on your Malta real estate .

This article was written by Marika Azzopardi, a freelance writer and journalist. A frequent contributor to national English language papers and magazines, she writes about a bevy of topics including art, people and life in general. She is also the author of children’s books and short stories, delving into adult fiction from time to time.