Does Light Pink Paint Go With a Mauve Carpet?

Decor Notebook

• Creating a color scheme means working directly with color. Start a notebook into which you can paste samples of the colors you are keeping in the room. Trim a few threads from an unobtrusive corner of the carpet; unless the color has changed with wear, you might take your sample from under a major piece of furniture you plan to keep. Fix the threads to a notebook page or index card with clear tape. This allows you take the actual carpet color to the paint or fabric store. Accumulate paint chips and fabric swatches to bring home and view in your own light.

Learning About Color

• Educating yourself on how decorators and others view colors will help you choose a color scheme which conveys the feeling you want a room to have. Reds, oranges and yellows are generally regarded as colors that create a warm look; greens, blues and violets create a cooler look. Whites, grays, blacks and neutral beiges can calm a room or create sharper definition and harder surfaces, depending upon how they are used. Online color tutorials, like Worqs, will teach you about color theory, ways to balance colors with each other, and the common strategies for combining colors.

Color Vocabulary

• Use online sites to develop your color vocabulary. "Hue," "shade" and "tint" are only a few of the words that have specific meanings to artists, decorators and others who work with color. Being able to speak color language will help you communicate effectively with paint and other decorating material suppliers.

Learning Color Composition

• Knowing how colors are composed will also help you turn your ideas into reality. The dusty pinkish lavender described as mauve is usually composed of some mixture of red, white, blue and black. Pinks composed of just red and white or red, white and a bit of blue coordinates better with mauve than pinks with a fleshy or yellow tone. Paint samples usually contain information about exactly how colors are composed. Ask your provider for the "recipe" for shades of pink you like.

Taking Chances

• Before making a final choice, challenge your judgment with some color combinations that are new to you. Consult decorating magazines and online sources for up-to-date color trends. Try out at least one analogous accent color with your pink-mauve combination -- a deep bluish red or a nearly-black purple, for example. Look at a complementary accent color, such as a sage or olive green. Push your color combination to farther limits, adding a strong navy and sharp bluish pink to the mix.

Getting Results

• In the long run, there are no absolute rules about what colors go with each other. Your best strategy for making final choices is to lay out all your samples in the room you are redecorating. Allow enough time to view them in a range of light, from bright and cloudy natural light to cozy evening lamplight. After several viewings, you will likely find your eye drawn to particular combinations of colors. Whether color theory, decorating advice or instinct guides your eyes, pay attention to what you return to visually over and over. Whatever the language, you've chosen a winnng combination.