Bringing Travel Home - COLOR
Travel often leaves us wanting to bottle up the sights, feelings, and experiences from our trips and bring them home. And yet many of us find that objects we bring back don’t have the same luster when they’re in our homes. Items can feel a bit kitschier than we thought, and even authentic decor items from that place don’t feel the same when removed from the environment that they were designed for.
SO WHAT’S A TRAVELER TO DO?
When we think about our favorite trips, it’s never about an object. It’s about about how we felt in a place and our experiences there. We can use a design scheme to bring a piece of those feelings and experiences into our homes by looking at color, pattern, texture, light quality, and of course art! You can create whole rooms inspired by your travels, or create little moments within your home that bring you back. This could be something as simple as a hallway or transitional space, or an accent chair in a corner.
In this creative prompt, we will be diving into COLOR as a way to tap into our travels. Stay tuned for an investigation into PATTERN in the next creative prompt!
COLOR
In the Capturing Your Travels creative prompt, I mentioned that blue, orange, and green is the color palette of my trip to the Italian lakeside. When we think of the places we’ve been, we often picture a color palette. Greece feels blue and white. I was in Mexico once as a child, and my big takeaway these years later was the effortless use of joyful color. When you think of the places you’ve been, what colors come to mind? These will be your building blocks for creating a scheme that reminds you of that place.
Italy
CHOOSING A PALETTE
When choosing a palette, remember that if colors go together in your pictures, then they can go together in your space! Mint green, blush pink, and mustard yellow are so delightfully happy together on this facade, and if you pull your color palettes from a photo where you love all the colors together, you can’t go wrong. Just remember to look at the tones - darker colors will have a more intimate feel, and lighter ones will have a more open feel. It’s OK to balance or even contrast the two in your spaces. In the above photo, the main colors of the buildings have a similar level of color saturation, and the doors and shutters are deeper, more saturated tones. It creates a wonderful balance that can be accomplished through your decor and textiles.
Greece
FINDING ACCENT COLORS
Photographs can be a great way to find accent colors if you are working with a limited palette. Gold and magenta make for lovely additions to the classic blue and white Greek Palette. You could choose one or the other, or both depending on the mood you’d like to bring to your space.
Mexico
REMEMBER, IT’S YOUR EXPERIENCE!
Someone else’s takeaway from a place may be different than yours. That’s OK! You’re not trying to recreate a place, you’re trying to capture the FEELING of being in that place, which is a much more personal experience than copying a decor style. White and teal may not be someone else’s first thoughts about Mexico, but if this was your view for a week, these colors could very easily bring you right back when applied with the right proportions. Embrace your experience, embrace your feelings about the trip, and let the moments you savored guide your color choices!
MY PALETTE
The oranges, blues, and greens of my most recent trip are basically my dream color palette. I was already using some of these tones in my home, and I have some fun new ideas on how to bring this vision full circle.
What places from your travels would you like to bring into your home? What colors do those places evoke for you? I’d love to hear about them in the comments!
And remember to check back in next week as we chat about patterns! Considering color, pattern, texture, lighting, and art will help you create a well-reounded travel space or moment in your home.
