“I like to look at life in color. ”
Color is captivating, with every home revealing its identity through an intentionally created interior color scheme.
Color has an extraordinary ability to create an atmosphere, either calming or energizing, or even both, in the same home. For this reason, I see myself as much more than a paint color consultant– I’m a guide, storyteller, as well as a home decorator.
A Personalized Journey into Color
So how does a color scheme begin?
A color scheme can be inspired by a favorite piece of art, a journey, or even an experience that had a significant impact on you. It can be as simple as a cherished photograph, a Talavera Mexican tile, or a necklace handed down through generations. The most impactful interiors are a combination of inspirational elements: I look for color combinations in nature, art, architecture, and even in food, allowing a tale to evolve along the way.
The journey begins with a visual story board created exclusively for your home, with specific colors for each room that will draw you from area to area. Your personalized color scheme is developed from this concept board and reviewed with you in your own home where we can see how the colors feel and how the light interacts with them. The process evolves through color swatches by room, trial sections of the colors inside the house, to a finalized color scheme.
As a paint color consultant, there is nothing I love more than creating a color concept for a client, developing a color scheme to supplement an already-existing one with, for example, colorful living room ideas, or designing a new departure for an entire home. Working together, we begin a process of evolution in your home. Whether you wish to feel enlivened, calmed, or nurtured by your surroundings, the perfect wall paint colors will be hand-picked to create a sanctuary that nourishes you.
I look forward to sharing my enthusiasm for color with you in a way that expresses who you are in every room of your home. We will work together, through your own custom color story, to achieve a place of beauty to welcome family and friends. A home that reflects who you are and is a place of personal peace that reveals your unique identity.
Color Scheme Examples
A color scheme is a story told through colors, the colors being the words of the story which create an atmosphere that evokes emotion.
I’ve arranged the color schemes I designed below with the most predominant colors at the top left. These principle colors are intended for use in the main rooms of the home, such as a colorful living room. Moving down to the right, the lower colors are ideas for painting bedrooms, for example, or for secondary use such as accent walls, trims, soft furnishings and accessories. Traveling through the “story” of colors within each scheme is intended to feel like a voyage which evolved from a specific concept.
Sunset Adobe Palette by Moya Donnellan
Sunset Adobe Color Scheme
Have you ever noticed how colors change during the golden hours of sunset? They become more saturated and tinted by the warmth of the setting sun.
My Sunset Adobe interior color scheme is a fresh take on the traditional adobe colors found throughout northern New Mexico where each color reflects the way it is actually perceived as the sun goes down. Reflective metallics were included to capture those last glimmering reflections of the fading light.
Frida Kahlo Palette by Moya Donnellan
Frida Kahlo Color Scheme
Frida Kahlo’s presence is alive and well in the high desert of New Mexico. One can find her portraits collaged into jewelry and pieces of artwork on sale in boutiques throughout Santa Fe and Taos. Given that she remains so loved and iconic, it was a delight to develop a color scheme as a way of paying homage. Her home is a fantastic source of color combinations for living rooms, indeed all the colors inside a house (and exteriors too!).
The Frida scheme is made up of intense, saturated bright colors as exuberant as the woman herself! As a paint color consultant I am inspired by the brilliant hues used in her home in Mexico City – intense blue, orange and yellow. Secondary colors are pink and bright yellow with accents of deep orange, plum purple, fuchsia, and a grass green. Her home is a great source of interior paint ideas.
Imagine living inside the same world of color that Frida did! How would this inspire you? Whose world would you like to replicate in your own interior?
Caravanserai Palette by Moya Donnellan
Caravanserai Color Scheme
The ancient Silk Road and the inns that existed for travelers across the desert region of Asia inspired the creation of this warm and expressive color scheme which elicits an exotic sense of adventure. It can be a great source of interior color schemes.
The colors in the top left are influenced by the colorful spices and rich silks from Persia and beyond with tones of sand and rust with yellow ochre providing a strong counterpoint. These would provide the groundwork for paint colors for living rooms and ideas for painting a bedroom. Rust-toned metallic is one of three metallics used in this scheme, serving as accent points.
Working through the interior color scheme from top left to bottom right, the secondary colors of mid and dark blue, plum and two metallics (green and blue) are included for depth and their light-reflective qualities, rounding out a full journey along the Silk Road.
Oceania Palette by Moya Donnellan
Oceania Color Scheme
My Oceania color scheme, which finds its inspiration in the deep blue sea, pays homage to the brightly colored and metallic fish swimming through coral reefs.
Deep blue and white are paint colors for living rooms, for example, the foundation of the color scheme. With mid-blue and sea green providing extra colors to use for the main areas of the home. This color scheme uses silver, blue and green metallics as accents to evoke the shimmer of ocean fish intended for use in trim or on an accent wall. The Oceania color scheme would be excellent for a bathroom paired with mother-of-pearl tile to achieve the serenity of the sea.