Designing With Color - Free Online Course

From paint colors to wood stains, your first impression of a space is over 50% influenced by its color combinations. Whether it’s a splash of orange in an accent color, a bold black and white living room, or a monochromatic dining room, color sets the vibe for your interior design. 

We’ve designed this free online course on using color in your home design to help you use color, regardless of your favorite design style or experience level. We’ll cover everything related to color choices in interior design, including picking color palettes for your whole home and finding the just-right wall color. 

Don’t have a day to get into learning? No problem. Each lesson is designed to be read in twenty minutes or fewer. Read a chapter a day and bookmark your favorite color ideas to come back to later.

Here’s a preview of some of the takeaways you’ll get from this online interior design lesson:

• How to pick complementary colors for your home decor
• The difference between warm colors, cool colors, and how each impact room design
• The psychology of primary colors
• How to create color schemes and color palettes (and the difference between them)

Note: While we might occasionally discuss paint colors, this course is not intended to help you buy paint. Benjamin Moore, Sherwin Williams, Farrow & Ball – we’re fans of all of them, and recommend each depending on your needs. 

The core value of this course is about how to pick your perfect color for any situation in your home design – whether it’s matching wood tones or adding jewel tones or none of the above. Paint is an important part of applying color in a home but it’s also only one step. The way natural light interacts with the undertones of your colors is just as important as the colors you pick.

With that out of the way, let’s dive into our guide on designing with color.

Understanding the color wheel

In this lesson, you’ll learn the difference between primary, secondary, and tertiary colors, plus how they layer to make new colors. From making an easy blue-green to creating the perfect yellow-orange, you’ll walk away from this lesson with a complete understanding of how to create your perfect color.

Basic color theory

The right color combo doesn’t happen by accident: it happens by theory. In this lesson, you’ll learn the difference between hue, saturation, light, tone, and more. We’ll also show off some of our favorite color combinations with real-life examples of interior paint colors and decor ideas. 

Color psychology

What does the dominant color of a room make you feel? Why do you love blue paint in one room and can’t stand it in another room? Does using pastels in small spaces make you feel a type of way? In this lesson, we’ll dive into the psychology behind color choice, and why warm neutrals might make you feel at ease but cool tones like teal never do.

Color schemes

The difference between a color palette and an interior color scheme is in how it's organized and applied. In this lesson, we’ll teach you the framework for applying a color scheme to your living space and future room ideas. From color schemes that lean into light blue to a minimalist taupe, these rules will help you create a cohesive color system for any design, even if it’s not interior! 

Color palette

Whether your palette has a few pops of color or embraces all neutral colors, this lesson will help you refine and stick to the perfect color palette for your design ideas. Design trends come and go and the color of the year changes, but the underlying principles of how to choose a color palette in this lesson will help you today and tomorrow.

Looking for even more insight on design? Check out our designing with patterns and intro to design style course.