Carpets come in various textures, styles, qualities, and the trickiest of all: colors. Deciding on the right color for any home décor, whether its wall paint, furniture color, or anything else, can be a challenging affair. Usually, you can’t truly visualize how something will look in your home after seeing it in a store. How you perceive a color will depend on the lighting, surrounding furniture, and the rest of the room’s overall aesthetic. For instance, you might not want to have a blue carpet in a room with pink painted walls, but you might like a blue carpet in a room with white walls.

The following tips and advice should help you figure out what color is the best for your room.

Select the Rest of your Décor First

Ideally, you want every part of your home décor to match in some way or to follow a cohesive theme. Most people’s source of frustration with their carpet is color. More specifically, the fact that the carpet color doesn’t match their furniture. So, before you start working on what color you want your carpets to be, you should figure out what the rest of your décor will look like, especially large-ticket items like your furniture.

Since sofas and sectionals have the least diversity in terms of color availability and often have the most visual weight in the room, I recommend starting there if you’re carpeting a living room. Once you’ve selected your seating, it’s time to choose your carpeting.

It may seem like the next logical step is to choose wall paint color because the walls take up the most space in the room, but do not make this mistake. Paint has the most diversity of available colors, much more than carpet or furniture. It will be much easier to match your paint to your carpet color than vice versa.

If the room you are selecting carpet for is a bedroom, then carpet color should come first. This advice may seem to contrast the method of choosing furniture first, but bedding and wall colors can be most easily adjusted. The principle remains the same, to start with those elements that have the least variety and match them with the most adjustable ones.

Neutral vs. Bright Colors

Think back to every carpet that you’ve ever seen in any environment, ever. You’ll probably notice some similarities in terms of color. The overwhelming majority of carpets tend to be very neutral or muted colors, while bright colors are scarce. For example, you may find a brightly colored carpet in a kindergarten classroom, but you won’t often see it in someone’s home.

There’s a good reason for this; neutral-colored carpets sell the most because they’re most appealing due to neutrals’ versatile nature. Also, bright colors tend to put people on alert and unsettle us due to their overwhelming appearance. Think about celebrity red carpets, for example. When you look at them, they instantly cause feelings of intense excitement and energy. While those feelings are appropriate for an event, having a red carpet in your living room might be a little extreme for your everyday lifestyle.

As there are almost always exceptions to rules, certain rooms practically beg for bright, bold colors, even on the carpeting. Any room geared towards children, or the kindercore movement (see article), can have colorful yet appropriate carpets. Stylized rooms, such as a Baroque-era inspired bedroom with glamorous, rich red carpets, also break this rule beautifully. And, if you are genuinely passionate about turning your floors into the ultimate statement piece, there are always decorative workarounds, which, while they may be time consuming and expensive, are still possible. Just know ahead of time what you are signing up for if you choose bright carpet.

Assess the Activity Level in the Room

Your lifestyle has a substantial impact on the kind of color that’s most appropriate for any room. White carpets, while gorgeous upon installation, will get dirty. Consider white carpet for a formal space, mainly used to entertain the occasional guest, to provide a nice clean appearance. The alternative is to invest in a high-quality carpet that can withstand lots of extra cleaning and stain guard treatments if you want white carpet in some of the more often used rooms in your home.

For a busy living room with kids and plenty of intermixing and socializing people, white carpets may not be the best choice. Darker colors naturally hide stains much better than lighter ones, so it will be easier to maintain lighter colors in rooms where you don’t expect much activity and darker ones in high traffic areas. However, dark colors can make your space look smaller. If you already have a small room or want the feeling of a bigger space, many light carpets have intentional flecks of color to help hide dirt and stains between deep cleanings.

While these are the general guidelines for choosing a color for your carpeting, carpet is intended to make your space comfortable. My advice is to choose a color that brings you comfort and joy. If you like it, it is the right choice. Some choices require more maintenance, and some require a little more creative elbow grease to make them fit into your vision. Still, as long as you know the challenges, you will be prepared and pleased with the result.

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Use Color Strategically

It’s been well-researched and understood that color has strong and immediate psychological effects on people, including influencing their mood and motivation levels. For example, red correlates with energy and danger, so painting a room red or including a few furniture items in red can make your employees feel energetic and alert. Red is especially advantageous in a space where people are as enthusiastic and active as possible for work performance. But can lead possibly to an increased level of mental fatigue and disagreements between coworkers.

In contrast, blue provides a calming effect that makes people relax and induces them to think more strategically. Blue also inspires trust, promoting teamwork within your company. Blue is a perfect color to have in meeting rooms since it will serve as a gentle reminder to everyone present to think first before saying or doing anything.

Similarly, other colors such as green and orange also have psychological effects on people and make them feel more relaxed. Ideally, you want to take full advantage of human psychology and make sure that each room has a color that is the most strategically useful for its purpose. Selecting color based on psychology might require a bit of planning, but the result will make a difference.

Incorporate Nature

Adding to the idea of color psychology, plants also serve as a very effective way to provide psychological calm to an individual. The color green is associated with nature and relaxation, so having green plants can be a compelling but subtle way to maintain an environment of relaxed nerves and cool heads in your office.

Compounding their color, plants also benefit from being a source of relaxation by themselves. Being within the vicinity of plants reminds people of nature and allows them to feel connected with nature despite being inside the office building.

Add Art

Art can be a brilliant source of inspiration for individuals at home or in the office. Within offices, it can be essential for creating an inspirational environment. Hanging a few pieces of large wall art can very quickly add interest and inspire employees. It can be a brilliant way to improve your company’s overall morale.

The type of art you use matters too. Having a portrait of an inspirational leadership figure in your office, whether it’s George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, or any other famous leadership figure, can have a powerful impact on your employees’ sense of your company’s seriousness and the strength of its leadership. While adding more whimsical types of art can keep things from getting too serious and provide a better environment for creativity.

Don’t Block the Exits

Keeping the entry and exit points of your establishment clear should seem obvious. Still, you’ll see many businesses place desks, plants, and other things far too close to their doors in attempts to maximize their space. Even if you aren’t breaking the fire code, clutter makes it harder to navigate, especially in an entry where the people who enter might not be familiar with your office. When determining how much clear space to allow in front of an entrance or exit, think about how many people will be in the area at one time. The more people moving in and out of your office, the more clear space you will need. A chaotic entry or exit point can ruin an otherwise perfectly functional office space.

Optimize Lounge Seating

A seating lounge for your employees is a must-have for any business, and it can have a powerful effect on your company’s overall morale. One fascinating modern trend that has developed over the past few years has been the rise of café-Esque aesthetics and more casual furniture in office lounge spaces.

The reason for this is that culturally we are assumed to be in a more relaxed state when we’re in the presence of furniture that we associate with positive places such as restaurants and cafes. As such, choosing to introduce a café-style seating lounge in your company can dramatically increase the positive association that your employees have with your company, which will increase their overall productivity.

Many modern businesses have already begun adopting this approach. Whether it is cafe-style seating or anything else that instantly evokes the happiness or relaxation typically experienced outside of the office, it has had documented positive effects. The employee seating lounge is the perfect opportunity to think out of the box and create a space that shows your employees that you appreciate them.

Layer the Lighting

Good lighting is an absolute must for any space. It doesn’t matter how beautiful your furniture is, how intricately you’ve set up a gallery wall or how you’ve strategically chosen the colors perfect for your rooms; lack of adequate lighting will ruin all of it in its entirety. A simple way to ensure ample lighting in any space, but especially a workspace, is to layer the light—mix natural light from windows with overhead lighting, wall sconces, and lamps.

A well-lit space can energize your employees throughout the day, increasing productivity and boosting their mood naturally. Alternately, being in a poorly lit area for long periods can be depressing and can have an adverse effect on your employees’ productivity and health. They might find it impossible to complete their tasks in the absence of sufficient light. It is also important to mention that having too much light in your office can also have adverse side effects. Consider adding desk lamps to give your employees more control of the light in their immediate area.

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