Design Ideas Using Colour in the Garden
When considering garden design ideas for your property, think about the visual impact of color. Color is the first thing we notice in a garden. Our other senses may be stirred by the scent of frangipani or the sound of water trickling in the background, but our immediate response is usually to the colors around us.
The shrubs and flowers you plant in your garden should ideally complement and harmonize with the colors inside your home. For instance, if you have a red feature wall or rug in your lounge, a few red flowering shrubs will blend beautifully when located within sight of that room.
When planning rooms inside the home, we tend to think about a color scheme, ensuring wall colors, floor coverings, and furnishings all work harmoniously together. These same considerations are equally important outside when considering your garden design ideas.
An overall color scheme for the garden embraces the hard and soft landscape as well as the incidentals such as furnishings, pots, and statuary. It makes sense to extend a color way from inside to out. Paving, timber, ornaments, and cushions can all take their cue from adjoining areas, linking all your garden design ideas together.
One of the most important influences on color is the light in which it is seen: the stronger the light, the paler a particular hue will appear. Pastels and soft colors that look lovely in a temperate climate can appear faded and insipid in brilliant sunlight. Bright colors such as purples, yellows, and scarlets originate in warm sunny climates where the intensity of color is increased by the strength of the sun’s rays.
Because the outside of the home is usually more spacious than rooms inside, there is greater scope for using different color ranges, particularly if the garden is subdivided into different areas.
Creative Use of Color
Garden Design Ideas Using Color:
Hot Colors:
As a general rule, hot colors draw the eye. A group of plants with strong primary colors placed at the end of a vista immediately attracts attention at the expense of everything else on the way. This is fine if you want to divert the gaze away from a less pleasant view. But if used indiscriminately, this approach can produce a series of unrelated focal points that make for an unsettled picture.
Artificial Grass:
If your lawn is not in good shape or full of dead spots, it can detract from the beauty of your work. Installing artificial grass is a solution that will last for ages with minimal upkeep, preventing unforeseen dead spots and keeping your lawn green all year.
Dark vs. Pale Colors:
Dark colors advance and pale colors recede, a principle that can be applied outside to alter perceptions of size and to lengthen or shorten views. A pale-colored planting scheme for a small courtyard is a far better choice than a dark one.
Color and Mood:
Color is very sensual and can affect us psychologically in different ways. Knowing this, we can use differing garden design ideas with color to enhance or change moods in different parts of the garden.
Warm colors such as yellows, reds, and oranges are stimulating, exciting, cheerful, and eye-catching.
Cool colors such as greens, blues, purples, pinks, whites, and silvers have calming qualities, producing a tranquil, peaceful atmosphere. Cool colors do not dominate a scene, allowing the eye to travel easily over them to a focal point beyond.
Consider these simple garden design ideas as an integral part of blending your indoor colour scheme harmoniously with your garden. You’ll be amazed by the feeling and flow created between the two spaces.