I'm getting my room renovated, I'd like some advice on the painting colours please?

Actually, yellow and blue with splashes of white goes great together. It’s a classic decorating combo. If you look at the second kitchen (I know your room isn’t a kitchen, but still) on this page or the bedroom on this page you’ll see some examples.

Cool colors are the way to go here but don’t go dark.
Colors have a profound impact on our state of mind. If you paint your room red, you’ll end up being agitated.Paint your room too dark and it’ll be depressing. I like light hued earth tones myself. White walls bug me. Too stark.

Hmm k then. I’m gonna wait for more answers to (hopefully) come in but thanx in the meantime!

Oh, and maybe I should say that the windows are only gonna be located in the renovated part (the big bulbous area in the floorplan). No use having windows to the toilet or another room).

There are great books on decorating if you can make it to a bookstore. Books that have color wheels and many times are devided by a color to start with and what goes with that color. Also, if you go to a Home Depot, or Expo even better, and look through wall paper samples and fabric. Lastly, scrapbooking stores (the chain Archivers is a good one) have amazing paper with color stories and themes and those are very easy to browse, because they are not in a book, but rather right out in front of you. You can walk through in just a few minutes and see if any of the colors attract you.

your room has a lot of light, nice floor plan btw. your very lucky to have a curve wall window, it has a good design to it.
the color that i had in mind is somewhat light yellow green. don’t worry about the blue cabinet. it will match, in my opinion. try the light yellow green with white, make it a vertical thick stripes between those two colors.

My floor is a cherrywood-coloured parquet floor, too. And since the blue cabinets won’t be changed, I say go for a light olive green. I don’t know how well you know RGB or hexadecimal colour codes, but the green I’m thinking is coded #CCFF99 or R=204, G=255, B=153.

@everyone Maybe I should just add that when you take a look at the floorplan, note that there’re no windows at all on the left wall (cause that’s the wall separating my room from my brother’s).

@augustlan Hmm that doesn’t look too bad. The yellow-blue combination for the kitchen and bedroom give a very country feel though. Not sure I’m looking for that sort of style.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic Kk thanx for the advice. So that leaves out red and anything dark. I do already know about the quality of red though (interesting random fact: this is one of the reasons why they red features so heavily in fastfood places. It ‘agitates’ people and makes them want to move on; perfect for the purpose of such a place).

@JLeslie I wish I could do that but unfortunately I don’t have the time to really go out into stores. Hence I’m asking you guys for help. =)

@fish4answers Hmm… Care to elaborate on that stripe thingy? I’m not sure I really get it. Are you talking about a rugby stripes thing, except vertical?

@aprilsimnel Oh man that’s a lovely colour… But I’m kinda worried that it’ll be too similar to walls of the stairwell just outside. The walls are something like #CCFF33. I want something more… individual if you get what I mean… But if the stairwell wall wasn’t that colour, I’d be quite inclined to use your suggested one.

And to anyone else reading, keep the answers coming in!

I would look through design blogs online, and pick what you like from each inspiration. You might like one thing from one site and take and idea and build from that. Also flickr is a good inspiration as well.

Actually, my own walls are #FF9900, but I think that’s probably too bright for your space, and also (though you’re not an American), with the cabinets being blue, it looks too much like the New York Mets (I haaaate their colour scheme!). Perhaps something in an ocean-y, light teal sort of a shade would suit?

@aprilsimnel Ooohh.. That kinda hit my eyes… I’m not sure how my eyes would react to waking up to that sort of orange (although I think that it would work perfectly if I were living right next to a tropical paradise beach, which I’m sadly not)... And the thing about the teal is that it’s a bit too… I don’t know… Depressing… To me, blue has this large risk of being depressing, especially at night when it becomes darker.

yup. light yellow green thick/wide vertical stripes, then white thick/wide vertical stripes, alternating.

I think your gut instinct is good with the yellow. the key is not to go so dark and to stay in a similar color value as the cabinets. Yellow goes with both the cabinets and the floors and would be a nice contrast with the stairwell as you look into the room. If you carry out the blue accents in the rest of your decorating, it will integrate the cabinets and work with them rather than against them. You can keep it from feeling too “country” by making furniture choices that feel more modern or mixing in a third color to shift it. A fresh orange or green thrown into the mix might help.

I could also see a soft rust color working well in the room.

I too like yellow and blue as a color combination and think it would work. If the yellow is a pale sophisticated one, you won’t get a real country look. However, if you want to avoid that, how about a pale, but warm taupe (sort of like the background I’m typing my answer on here.) That would give a more sophisticated look and you coul accent with blue cushions to match the cabinet. Another possibility is a soft cream like Benjamin Moore’s antique white or cameo white. They are lovely soft neutrals that would bring out the floor and cabinets. You could maybe then accessorize with rust and blue to bring the floor and cabinet together.

If you have to keep the cabinets, is there any way they’ll let you change the color of them, perhaps with a type of sticky contact paper, wall paper or even paint? I think that one wall a dark color and the rest all lighter pastel shades might give your room some ‘snap’. I recently saw an office with one dark blue wall and all the rest wood grain or off whites, and it made it seem vibrant without being a place to get agitated or drowsy. All that window space is going to give you plenty of light, so a bit of contrasting dark color, perhpas on the wall of the toilet facing the windows would have the desired effect.

Good luck with your decorating, and there are some very good tips here.

I have not used this, but it is supposed to be a link to show what a room is like with different color walls that you pick http://www.bhg.com/decorating/color/colors/welcome-to-color-a-room/

Blue with yellow and white looks great together, augustlan is right, reminds me of traditional DC. I like a yellow that is not too bright.

@fish4answers Hmm… I’m real sorry but I think that that ain’t the look I’m going for. I believe that the walls should be solid in their look, but thanks for your suggestion anyway! =)

@elocin Your suggestion is seriously intriguing me. But I gotta ask, what do you mean by ‘color value’, ‘accents’ and ‘shifting’? I’m really sorry but I’m a complete beginner and so’ll need some help with terminology. And how would the rust work? As a wall colour?

@janbb Yeap I’m planning to go with a paler yellow to make it easier on the eyes (plus I don’t want it to be too ‘straight-in-your-face’). I’m thinking of using something closer to white on the ceilings, maybe your white suggestion mixed with some of the yellow.

@evelyns_pet_zebra Regarding the cabinets, I have no idea whether they’d let me do that. I believe that they’d think of it as too ‘inconvenient to go through all that hassle’. As for the snappy feel… All I can think is that I’m either going to love it or hate it. It’s so… unexpected… Furthermore, I’m not sure that it would go with the feel I want in my room, which is a nice, restful, uplifting space for me where I can lay back and listen to music or read a book or surf the net.

@JLeslie I’ve seen something like that on another website, but I never really thought to earnestly use it. Maybe I’ll try over the weekend.

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Of course guys, I feel so stupid for totally forgetting to talk about the ceiling. I read online that for ceilings they should usually be just the same colour as the wall, except around two shades lighter. So I’m guessing that if I go for a pale kind of colour, the ceiling would be almost white right?

And also, I seriously can’t believe the feedback I’m getting here. It’s fantastic. Thanks everyone!!

We usually paint the ceiling white or off-white even with a colored wall, but if the yellow is pale enough, you could just use that (or a lighter tint of it as you say.)

You did a wonderful job of giving good info that helps us make suggestions. :-)

Yellow, blue and white has typically been used for traditional styles, but it can be modern, too. Choose furniture with clean lines, and bedding/window coverings that aren’t ‘fussy’, and you’ll have a winner!

No worries, I design things for a living so sometimes it’s hard for me to put things in layman’s terms. :)

I was thinking of the rust as a wall color, kind of a terra cotta shade (ruddy, like pottery, but lighter). Whichever color you decide, I think an off-white or cream ceiling would be great.

Color value is tricky to explain. One way to think about it is if you made everything grayscale (like in a black and white photo), things of the same color value would be the same shade of gray even if one thing was pink and the other was purple. The cabinets are light blue, so their color value is pretty light. You’d want a yellow that was likewise light.

Your wall color is your main or primary color. The blue on the cabinets is an accent color—it’s part of the room, but there isn’t very much of it. If it’s the only blue in the room it will stand out. If you put more of that blue in the room, it will tend to feel more intentional and designed. For example, you could have bed linens that are either the color of the cabinets or that used that color in their design like in a border or a pattern.

By shifting, I by referring to the color scheme of the whole room. Right now it’s (theoretically) a yellow and blue room (the floor and ceiling are neutral enough to leave out in this example). Which as many people have pointed out have a more traditional feel. You can shift your color palette by introducing more colors like in the room @augustlan linked to above. You could for instance mix in some of that rust/terra cotta color I was talking about earlier. That could look great. Or go for something a little stronger since everything’s so light right now to keep it from being too pastel.

Hth.

You like light colours and you have plenty of light coming in, so I don’t think you’ll have much of a problem anyway. Yellow sounds like a good idea, I wouldn’t pick green. Personally I like darker colours, but this is your room, so how about a corn yellow, or, if you want something warmer, a little bit of orange in there? What I have done with my house is paint a basic colour underneath and then a different shade with sponge on top. It’s very easy to do, if your parents allow it. In your case you could ask the professional painters to use a basic, darkish yellow and then go over it with the light corn yellow (dip sponge into paint, squeeze, then dab the wall, repeat process). Remember to use the same strokes throughout (small circles work best). Check with your parents FIRST though. Mine would kill me, they hated it when they saw it. Good thing I own the place.

Sigh… Guys… I got bad news..

After lots and lots of discussion, I gave the room to my sister. There was quite a lot of unhappiness about the ownership of the room (despite the fact that I thought that it was all already settled), and my parents had to be brought in.

Therefore, I have taken another room. Totally different shape (very rectangular). Larger than this renovated room by maybe one and a half times. So it looks like the whole dynamics have changed.

I’ll see whether I’ll want to do anything about this new room… In the meantime, thanks so much for your help guys. I seriously seriously appreciate all the great advice and thought that has obviously gone into these answers.

bummer.. hehe. bigger the better though.

@fish4answers Oh trust me, it’s way bigger. It’s even got a balcony attached to it. So technically I have one whole room plus a balcony. The room’s also pretty bright, so not much loss on that front.

The only problem is that there’s so much space I almost don’t know what to do with it. In fact, I caught myself thinking that maybe the best way to utilise the space would be to bring a trampoline right into the middle of the room. Of course, the ceiling’s a pretty solid limiting factor to that.. Pity..

how about a pool table? or rather, scrap that…how about a swimming pool? Yeah! :)
Big rooms are good, and you’ll fill it up in no time. Start by occupying just a tiny corner though.

sorry, I don’t have much of an answer for you other than I think yellow is your best bet. But I just wanted to say that I admire the time you spent on this other than just not caring about it.

Hey guys! Update on this question! Take a look here for what the room looks like now.

And once again, a great big thanks to everyone. I don’t know what I’d do without you. =)