Vered Rosen Design: Blue Rooms

I've recently started working on a teenage girl's bedroom, which will most likely be a "blue room". The room has a ton of potential - it's totally empty and large enough to add a seating area as well, which is wonderful. This teenage has been spending a lot of time in Europe, so her taste has been shaped by European design: sleek and contemporary. Like other kids, she loves vibrant colors, so my role is to make it all work: come up with a vibrant and cool design but make sure it won't too overpowering. I've been looking at blue rooms online and I noticed that the pretty ones shared a few common decorating tricks:

1. A healthy dose of white is needed to bring those dark blues alive. Infuse white not only as blocks of it like in large furniture pieces, walls, bookcases, but in pattern as well. see how lovely these blue and white pillows are in the picture below?

West elm white headboards against a blue wall (painted ceiling), Jerry Jacobs design

2. Textured walls (using different painting techniques or applying wall paper) can soften the look of bright colors.

Google Image Result for http://assets.curbly.com/photos/0000/0012/5556/blue-room-design-ideas-21.jpeg

3. A variety of shades of blues and blue-greens. Blues, like greens, go well together. If you are decorating with blue-greens, stick with the variety of blue-greens like teals and turquoise as well as green blues. If you like the purplish blues, stay with blue-purples, navy blue and purple blues.

4. Blues come alive with a tiny bit of yellow, orange or pink (their complementary colors), depending on the predominant blue (blue-purple complements yellow, teals or blue-greens complement orange or pink) The reason blues come alive around these complementary colors is because they simply enhance each other. These colors appear more vibrant next to their complementary colors. I will not get into the biological explanation of this phenomena, but there is one...

modern living room by Erika Bierman Photography

Woodvalley - Bathroom - contemporary - bedroom - baltimore - Ziger/Snead Architects

Cool House Tour 2008 - contemporary - bedroom - austin - CG Design-Build

The Upward Bound House by Elizabeth Bomberger - asian - bedroom - los angeles - Becky Harris

5. Provide sufficient lighting - blue rooms can feel somewhat cold, so provide enough warm lighting to avoid that. If the walls are painted with a dark shade of blue, you will need even more lighting to avoid feeling "blue" in that space. This is true with any dark colored interior simply because the darker the walls are the less light they reflect back. A good lighting plan uses layers of light - up lights (wall sconces, table and floor lamps), down lights (ceiling lights, recessed) and surrounding lights (table lamps, wall, floor lamps and indirect lighting fixtures).