The Neutral Zone

Hi Everyone! Since my last few posts have been about colour and how to use it, I thought this time I’d give you a lesson in working with Neutrals and the Achromatic Colour Scheme. Neutral interiors seem to be the favourite of sooooo many people. They fill the pages of every Design Porn magazine; some Designers have made entire careers out of using only them; I heard your collective woohooery when you read it’d be today’s subject. I think there are two reasons why people love neutral interiors. 1) they’re very calming and harmonious and 2) they’re hard to screw up. While the former is true, the latter is a little trickier. So I thought I’d do another of my oh-so-popular “One Room, Two Looks” showing the same space done in Neutrals and using the Achromatic Grey Scale. Never let it be said I don’t give my audience what they want.


When working with Neutrals you’re not using any colour, only black, white, grey, brown, beige, tan, etcetera. What you need to understand is black, white, grey are “cool” colours and brown, beige, tan are “warm” colours. So when using them you want to have a balance of warm and cool because it’s not only more harmonious, our brain actually likes to see it. So here’s a Transitional Living/Dining Space to illustrate my point:

Room Design Created Using HOMESTYLER App

Here you can see that I’ve balanced the grey walls and white trim with some beige walls and warm woods in the flooring, case goods and rug. The browns and beiges are warm because they’re a broken hue derived from orange which is a warm colour. By mixing them with the greys, blacks and whites, they balance each other out. In addition, I’ve mixed the metals here (yes, you can) using brass and chromes together as they’re warm and cool, respectively. This room is very harmonious and this look is one so many want to have. You’ve seen it in a million Design magazines and it’s a look I get asked about a lot - I can’t lie, it kinda looks like my own parents’ house (Hi Mom & Dad). Now we’ll look at the same room in the Achromatic Colour Scheme.


Using the Achromatic Colour Scheme means you’re layering black, white and shades of grey as can be seen in the Achromatic Grey Scale:

So let’s have a look at the same room done using only black, white and greys. This is the scheme that’s trickier because, without the warm tones, how do you achieve that balance?? Let’s look:

Room Design Created Using HOMESTYLER App

So what you’ll notice here is while the room is still harmonious, it’s much more dramatic. This is because of the stark contrasts going on. The conflict of black and white gives this room a bit more edge. The other thing to notice is without the warmth of the brown tones the room feels colder and needs something else to warm it up. Cue the Heavy Metal. I achieved that by bringing in warm metallics only here in the accessories. I used golds, coppers and bronzes to achieve the temperature balance. Metallics don’t really have a hue. They take their cues from what’s around them. In all that achromatic surrounding they appear yellow, orange and brown - all warm hues. If you’re going to go with an Achromatic Colour Scheme like this one, you definitely need warm metals or your room will feel colder than a virgin on Prom Night.

So I hope this has given you some insight on navigating the Neutral Zone. It is a popular look and fairly easy to achieve if you follow the rules of design.

Be sure to check back with me for more posts. Also, feel free to leave comments on what you’ve read here or if there’s something you’d like to see a future blog posts about. And don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you’re looking for help with your home. Thanks for reading and striving to live the Well Designed Life.


Steve

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