10 unexpected ways to use color, according to a design pro

Noz Nozawa, the San Francisco-based founder of Noz Design and 2024 BHG Stylemaker, believes good design comes from recognizing inspiration all around you. “My goal as a designer is to free people from the feeling that there are rules, shoulds, or shouldn’ts,” says Nozawa. See how she finds inspiration and puts together fun, free-spirited spaces bursting with bold, unexpected color combinations.

1. Keep what inspires you

Nozawa stashes objects that move her – a well-made tassel, Japanese folk art, notes on a color combination she spotted out the car window – in a drawer in her office of what she calls “fun” things. That’s key to her interior design ethos, which is to be open to inspiration and experiment freely. She says that by paying attention to the objects that speak to her, she’s “learned what colors I look good together or what colors I can combine.”

2. Colour strong

For her room at the Kips Bay Decorator Show House in Palm Beach, Nozawa chose the unconventional color palette of “tomato red and lavender-purple-pink,” following a rule she learned to break in her high school’s Red Hat Society, whose members proudly wore the red-purple combination, which some found garish. “They were all about making the most of your life!” says Nozawa.

3. Mix it

“It’s perfectly fine if an object or piece of furniture doesn’t fit in your space. If you love it, you can find a way to incorporate it,” she says. In her modern apartment In a historic neighborhood, Nozawa maintains a mix of styles that includes a 1970s sofa, an antique French-style couch and curtains painted to look like old tapestries.

4. Use the soil

In an open-plan home where it can be difficult to create volumes of color, Nozawa suggests “thinking of the floor as the sixth wall and playing with a strong statement in the carpeting. We opted for similar values ​​in the colors and aimed for full saturation in the rugs and furniture.” The jewel tones repeat in the artwork, creating a sense of continuity.

5. Use the rainbow

Nozawa follows Coco Chanel’s advice to look in the mirror and take off an accessory, preferring “rainbows where one color is taken out.” The color-blocked kitchen, for example, lacks green. Nozawa also recommends adding a base color to light rooms. “I always like to have black somewhere in the room. It allows the eye to rest on something consistent and real, so your eyes can process the color balance.”

6. Color wash

How do you bring bold color into your home? “Paint the walls a super bold color and keep almost everything else in the room neutral,” recommends Nozawa. In this living room, metallic side tables and a gray rug and sofas — which echo the marble in the fireplace — let the wall color take center stage. Yellow accents — almost the opposite of blue on the color wheel — add a touch of contrast.

7. Think about the whole spectrum

“I encourage people not to think that if the ceiling is white, they can only use one color for the walls,” says Nozawa. The light pink ceiling harmonizes with the fuchsia walls, Easter egg-pink fireplace and almost magenta trim, creating an enveloping effect that is anything but monotonous. A reddish sofa in the bay window is so light that it almost seems white, offering the eye a respite from the intensity.

8. Get inspired by wallpaper

To create an indoor-outdoor feel in a room with small windows, Nozawa chose a jungle-themed wallpaper, then used an eggplant shade from the wallpaper for the woodwork. “We wanted it to feel very cozy,” she says. To balance the bold hue, she made sure the furnishings, including a caramel-colored leather sofa and cream tones, felt “neutral rather than explosive.”

9. Add a palette cleaner

By designing the nursery in black and white, Nozawa created a “happy and fun” space that would also grow with her client’s baby. To break up the newspaper print effect, she chose a tan leather rocking chair and made cushions from mud-colored fabrics. “It seemed like a great way to bring in earthy, contrasting tones,” she says.

10. Proceed graphically

In a living room where wainscoting, windows and built-in bookshelves took up much of the wall space, Nozawa opted for wallpaper with a bold pattern without fear of it overpowering the space. The black and white background allows for a strong accent color in purple, different versions of which appear in the armchairs and the two-tone graphic rug.