10 Feng Shui Tips - How to Use the Power of Color in Your Home

Franca Giuliani - Within feng shui as within design, color is very important and powerful. Before trying to pick out the "right color” for home decorating, let's try to understand color.

Color is energy. (And, remember, everything is energy.) Colors are specific wavelengths of energy that can be used to balance our chi, our life force. Here's what colors can do for you and yours:

• Colors have an impact on our emotions and our vibration. They possess the power to arouse or to tranquilize, to bring joy or create depression. 
• Colors engage our eyes and influence how we interpret our emotional experiences. By understanding the emotional context of colors, we can manipulate the experience of space to benefit our energetic body.

Color Has Three Dimensions

HUE: This is the first recognizable characteristic of a color. It's the quality by which we distinguish one color from another, as red, yellow, etc.

VALUE: The quality by which we distinguish a light color from a dark color (or how clean the color is). Value is raised by adding white and is lowered by adding black. Colors change in value with light - the brighter the sun, the more light you have coming into a room, the brighter the room colors will be.

INTENSITY: The quality by which we distinguish a strong color from a weak one. Color is lowered in intensity by adding gray or by adding its complementary color. 

Color Has Harmony

This is an agreeable combination of colors, and there are two kinds of harmony.

CONTRASTED HARMONIES use colors on the opposite side of the color wheel. Most common are complementary colors - exactly opposite.

RELATED HARMONY uses colors close to each other on the color wheel or only one color. Analogous colors are adjacent on the wheel and monochromatic colors are using one color with varying values of one color.

White and black are technically not colors. White is a tint and black is a shade. White is actually all colors reflecting off a surface. Black is all colors absorbed into the surface (the absence of color).

10 General Color Tips

Color can be used to compensate for deficiences in your living environment and as a way of enhancing or augmenting your potentials.

1. Avoid dull, flat colors such as grey or beige. They stifle creativity and efficiency. If you can’t avoid using them, bring in more life with flowers, or bright art or pictures, but avoid "color pollution."
2. It's better to have light, bright colors than either very strong or very weak colors.
3. Red is very auspicious and passionate. Add a small amount of bright red to an environment to enhance the power base of the individual occupying the space. But less is more - too much of it may cause arguments.
4. Green in general means potential, growth, tranquility, hope, and freshness. Soft greens and blues will calm nerves and lower voices.
5. Routine tasks that require extended periods of concentration are supported by green.
6. Yellow is effective in energizing creativity and brainstorming. It represents longevity.
7. Soft blue or purple is helpful for work that requires deep thinking or imagination.
8. Use warm soft yellow, orange, or peach to compensate for slow, uninspiring work.
9. Use pink or peach to enhance love and soften relationships.
10. Too much black can be draining and cause depression.

Your Feng Shui Homework

Your homework for this month is to go through each of the rooms in your space, and look at your room colors with a fresh eye.

Observe the main colors. How do they make you feel?

Take your time with this assignment, so you can really understand how the colors are affecting you. Then, you can decide if anything needs to change.

Until next month, be well.

Franca

Bonus

Click here to read 5 Ways to Spin the Color Wheel to Decorate Your Home and watch a great how-to video. 

Franca Giuliani is an environmental advisor, integrated feng shui consultant, and energy clearer whose inquisitive nature has led her down the path of the metaphysical world and related topics. Now Franca uses her expansive knowledge and experience to help individuals get their bearings and think differently about themselves and their space, enabling them to better plan for the future. 

She collectively uses a number of modalities to help people become aware of their environment, acknowledge it, and then help them begin to reach a better balance. Becoming aware of one’s environment and understanding why things are happening is the foundation to a possible transformation of life.

Franca has studied feng shui, energy clearing, and astrology for over nine years and continues to study under world-renowned instructors. A graduate of the Feng Shui Alliance School formerly in Edgewater, NJ, she holds a BFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and a certificate from NYU. Additionally, Franca studied in Antwerp, Belgium and graduated from a Feng Shui Society of the United Kingdom accredited program.

Franca practices and teaches courses on relevant topics. She's consulted and lectured within the New York metro area, as well as in Italy. Italy has been Franca’s second home since childhood. She considers herself an Italian aficionado and organizes tours throughout Italy where she can share her knowledge and passion for this amazing country.