Ayurveda Essence by AFM Safecoat

Having fun with structured design schemes
You may already have some ideas about a color or two you’d like to use. But creating a scheme or outfitting a whole house may seem daunting. We’d like to share some basic knowledge that may make the task of color combining easier.

Find your healing color combinations
Roll over the number to display the colors.

Please note that due to variance in monitor calibrations, the on-screen color representations here are not necessarily precise reproductions of actual paint colors. You may bring any of the color chip numbers to your local AFM Safecoat retailer to match and/or order the exact color that you are looking for.

One of the simplest things you can do is to create a monochromatic color scheme. As the name implies, this means restricting your color choices for a given space to an assortment of tints, shades, and tones of a single hue. In AFM's Ayurveda Essence system, we have spaced the value steps far enough apart so that you will automatically avoid clashes when you create a monochromatic design. For slightly more depth, you can create an analogous scheme, which involves using a trim color that is next to your dominant color on the color wheel.

If you would like to restrict yourself to two colors, there are two simple ways to do it. One is to work with colors that are complements of one another. A color that is directly across from another color on the color wheel is known as a complementary color. For example, orange is directly across from blue, and violet is directly across from yellow. Another way to use a two-color design is to use a diad. This is using two colors that are two colors apart on the color wheel.

A technique you can use when working with three colors is to use a split complimentary scheme. If you wanted to use a pair of trim colors to compliment a wall color, you could use the colors to the left and right of the complimentary color. For example, if you wanted to paint your wall a gold color, split complimentary colors would be in the blue-green and red violet range. This is because they sit astride blue, which is the closest compliment to yellow and gold. Using three colors that are spaced equally from each other is known as a triad.

To create a structured scheme with four colors, otherwise known as a tetrad, a square or rectangle within a color wheel will point the way.