Design Dilemma: Monochromatic Rooms

These are some ideas for living room interior design.  What’s another word for a monochromatic room? BORING!  Or at least, there’s that danger in the wrong hands. That’s because decorating a room in all one color can be extraordinarily hard to pull off.  Where’s the variety? Where’s the contrast? Where’s the interest? If you’re going to do it, you better know what you’re doing!

Here are three secrets to making a monochromatic room work:

1) Keep things to the same palette, but choose variations on a color.In other words, if you’re a fan of gray and want to do a monochromatic gray room, choose different types of gray to keep things interesting — silver, steel, cloud gray, charcoal gray.

2) Inject lots of texture. It’s texture that’s going to play a starring role in a monochromatic room. So be sure to inject a mix of materials whenever you have the opportunity. Below, a blue living room room makes liberal use of texture by coating walls in a glossy slick paint, but incorporating a plush velvet blue sofa for contrast. A blue leather chair provides yet another texture. This room also makes use of principle number 3 by injecting a pop of bright yellow in the paintings for contrast.

3) Break your scheme with a shot of color. This is a favorite design trick as it underscores how important a little variety is to an interesting room (and life!) It’s counterintuitive but a slice of color actually emphasizes all the “one color-ness” of your space.  It also suggests that you are confident, a bit of a risk-taker and you knew what you were doing when you bought all black furniture, textiles and paintings. Think how boring the room below would be without the bubble gum pink table and yellow painting.