Good Paint Colors for Energy & Love in the Bedroom

Before choosing a paint color for your bedroom, consider the emotional backdrop you want to create. Paint a bedroom, especially one that you share with your spouse, in colors that promote energy and love.

Describing Colors
Learn to describe color shades clearly by using a system based on the properties of color. Following name trends such as "coriander," "aspen" or "ice" can be confusing, especially when the season changes and new descriptions appear. But the essential properties of color never change. The three main properties of color are hue, intensity and value.

Hue refers to the basic color. You'll recognize the names of hues, which include blue, red, yellow, green, orange and purple.

Intensity (or chroma) describes the quality of brightness or dullness of color. Scarlet is a high-intensity red and rust a lower-intensity red.

Value (or saturation) refers to the lightness or darkness of a color. A pastel pink is a low value, while midnight blue is a high value.

Color and Emotion
Although most people react to color in similar ways, some people may have personal likes and dislikes that differ from the majority. These idiosyncratic reactions often are related to experiences associated with particular colors.

For most people, high-intensity colors are exciting, and low-intensity colors aren't. Be careful with deep reds, which might be romantic but may also promote high blood pressure, tension and aggression. A lower value of red (pink, for instance) has a calming effect.

Feng shui, the Chinese system of harmonizing space, recommends pink for love. Interior decoration sites also advise a lower value of red for bedrooms. Sherwin-Williams even suggests a specific paint, "rose-colored," as a romantic color. Pink promotes energy, too. Red, even at a low value, is an energizing color.

To create a rose color yourself, begin with a red hue, lower its intensity ever so slightly with a pinch of brown, and mix in white to lower its value to your taste.

Choosing Your Paint
Choose your paint color with an eye toward your personal preferences. Don't use any kind of pink if either you or your spouse hate pink. Or try adjusting the shade of pink to one you will enjoy. For instance, add blue to create a pinkish-lavender shade. Add yellow to create a peach color.