While planning colour for a living room, begin with an existing feature, if only because it costs less to redecorate a room than to refurnish it. You could take into account the tone of the floor, which is a permanent feature in the room. This gives you an immediate advantage ? as in a crossword puzzle, the first clue solved helps with the next.

Else, you can always establish your own unalterable base. If, say, you fancy a blue carpet, you can build on blue with a tone-on-tone scheme.

Starting from the blue carpet, you can use other blues ? a paler one on walls, a greyer one on woodwork, a greener one for upholstery; neutral white on the ceiling and woodwork trims to help set off the blues; and accessories in red, orange or black to add sparkle.

Alternatively, the fixed blue could be part of a complementary scheme. Starting with the same blue, you could make it the contrasting element to soft yellows, corn colour and white, with perhaps both blue and one of the other colours in a patterned curtain fabric.

Using another example, say a cherry or beech laminate floor (a great favourite nowadays) as your starting point, you already have a large area of a specific colour. This can be the trigger for a series of natural colours and materials ? hessian colour for walls; broad striped curtains in browns, greys and off-white; off-white paint work; Kashmiri rugs in dark brown and off-white, and so on.

Artificial light

Artificial lighting does not normally create a colour problem in living rooms, although it changes the appearance of most colours to some extent.

Fluorescent lighting can make some colours look washed out, while the tungsten filament bulbs give a warmer cast to most colours. Normal eyes easily adapt to such slight changes, but when choosing colours, it is a good idea to view them in both daylight and artificial light.

Collective approach

Living rooms are primarily family rooms ? a homely place to watch television, entertain visitors and simply relax. As with all other colour scheduling, decorating living rooms depends on personal taste. The danger is in trying to force your taste on other members of the family.

Many families span a fairly wide age group with widely differing tastes in colour. Some sort of compromise may be needed if everyone is to feel at home. So endeavour to make colour planning a family decision.

There are other considerations, too. If you do a good deal of entertaining, you can afford to be a little bolder in your pick of colours than if you spend most of your time at home and want something more restful. But generally, as living rooms are semi-public in function, you should aim for something more acceptable to friends and family than the decor you would choose for a strictly personal room. If you aim for a restful decor, you might choose soft sage greens, beige and oatmeal, which are discreet colours.

For a more exhilarating scheme, you might choose the current fashion colours and stimulating tints such as white and orange, or purple, blue and green.

Trendy tones

Fashion in colour, as in clothing, is a fickle thing. If you agree, you may also decide against colours even if they are trendy. Keeping up with fashion means almost constant redecoration, since colour fads, designs and ideas for using materials alter rapidly.

The 1960s and 1970s, for example, saw an upsurge of interest in purples. Then came browns, in many shades from beige to peat, only to be threatened immediately by an onslaught from sharp lettuce green and deep strong pinks!

All this shows that fashion for its own sake is only for outgoing people with either great colour tolerance or ample time and money.

Keeping up with progress is quite another matter. Paint and fabric manufacturers constantly come up with new colours and textures and durable materials. It is worthwhile keeping abreast of these developments, because old materials and methods undeniably tend to look outdated to the discerning eye.

The author is a senior faculty member at J.D. Birla Institute (Calcutta), where she has been delivering lectures, guiding research and conducting projects in housing and interior design for over 20 years. An interior design consultant, she specialises in ergonomics at home and work. She can be contacted at kusumsmail@yahoo.com