Complementary Color Scheme - Orange

This bedroom is decorated in a complementary color scheme... meaning that the two dominant colors in the room - orange and blue - are opposite each other on the color wheel. The cool blue (2) cancels out the warmth of the vibrant orange (1)... creating a balanced color scheme. The designer uses a pastel blue (2) instead of a bolder blue... which creates the calming feel for the bedroom. Notice that only one wall has the strong orange color... this is the accent wall. Using this color on more than one wall may be too overwhelming and offset the calming balance for a bedroom. The other walls are a tint of the vibrant orange (3). The red wood tones of the dresser (6) are adjacent to the orange on the color wheel. When choosing accent colors for a complementary color scheme, you can choose colors adjacent to the dominant color as accents. If you choose to do this... make sure the adjacent colors are close to the dominant color. Moving to far away from the main color on the color wheel will pull apart a complementary color scheme. It may have been interesting to see a few accents using the shade of the main color (5).