Some pointers from the pros

Local designers are covering the spectrum. They’re infusing cozy meringue-colored kitchens with orange floors and fire-red appliance knobs. They’re painting 29,000-square-foot homes that have basketball courts in the basement a kid-friendly coffee-bean brown. And they’re doing everything in between for movie stars, chief executives and a lucky few on a budget.

Their approaches are all different, yet they agree on these points:

• Don’t overuse color, unless you’re short on cash and need it to create the drama that would otherwise come from upholstery, window treatments, rugs and art.

• Don’t follow a cookie-cutter point of view. What works in your sister’s Colonial may not blend with your Arts and Crafts bungalow. Or maybe it will. Each project, they say, requires a custom approach.

• Don’t give up and think an all-white room is safe. It’s boring.

• Finally, don’t fall for the colors of the moment — soft golds and versions of celadon, a grayish green — unless they look and feel right. For just about every designer we talked to, these colors often do. Designers are using them in contemporary and traditional interiors to warm up the feeling of a room and intensify brassier accent hues.

Here are a few designers’ suggestions:

Let the climate be your guide

Illya Hendrix and Thomas Allardyce, L.A.

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Gray and cool blue are seen on the East Coast because there is a real winter there producing those colors in nature. But because Southern California has an almost year-round golden season, it’s fitting to display warm colors in homes here.Don’t be afraid

Richard Landry, L.A.

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He has found that people don’t want to commit to a color palette because they worry that it may get stale. “For us, it’s not about trends but colors that mean something special to our clients. No one gets tired of colors that they cherish.”

Just try it

Jenny Armit, L.A.

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She shoots vibrant hues into rooms of soft dove gray and deep cream. “Color is life-enhancing,” she says. “It is also the one area that if you do make a mistake and get it wrong, it is easily changed.” Before repainting the “wrong” color, lighten or darken it by applying a glaze or color wash.

If you’re uncertain, get help

Eric Guenther, San Juan Capistrano

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“Everyone thinks they should be able to pick color, but not everyone can cook or draw,” says the color consultant and interior designer of Whim Furniture and Interior Design. “Sometimes it’s worth spending a couple hundred dollars to hire a consultant before spending thousands of dollars to paint.” Guenther says color consultants charge around $200 to $300 for a home evaluation. Consultants will inquire about colors that the client likes as well as the mood the client wants to create and the level of formality to be achieved. Then the pros pull paint samples and prepare a list of colors for walls, finishes, trims, moldings and ceilings. Before hiring an interior designer or color consultant, ask for referrals and to see previous work. Websites such as the American Society of Interior Designers (www.asid.org) can help.

Celebrate contrasts

David Desmond, L.A.

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Too much contrast, however, can make a room seem small; to enlarge the look, use similar hues. For a dining room in a house inspired by the late Louis XV period, Desmond painted the woodwork in bone, celadon and pale pink, and the fabrics are French silk damasks woven in quiet lavender, pink and green. “The combined effect is elegant, like an engraving that has been hand-colored.”

Bring the outside in

Paul Wiseman, San Francisco

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One example: He used muted bark gray, moss green and ocean blue in a Pebble Beach house.

Trick the eye

Peter Dunham, L.A.

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In a gloomy room, he brightens with warm red, blue and green. A low ceiling can be visually raised by painting colorful vertical stripes on the walls. An overly high ceiling can be softened by horizontal stripes. “My work and my line of fabrics at Thomas Lavin Inc. are about color and pattern,” he says, “but an all-white room with a single colorful Matisse painting is the ultimate.”

Be dramatic

Jack Lionel Warner, Santa Barbara

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He put red in his den; the walls and upholstery mirror a lacquered red antique flat-top desk with tracery designs of dragons. “Get one beautiful, expensive piece and play that up with color.”

Easy does it

— Marc Appleton,

Santa Monica and Santa Barbara

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He guards against gauche by placing color carefully. “There are no bad colors, just bad color combinations.”

Spotlight the details

Jackie Terrell, L.A.

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Terrell accented the arches and niches in a Spanish-style house in Santa Monica in different colors, from a pale pink in the living room to an earthy orange dining room.

Add romance

Alicia McAlpine, L.A.

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Her clients live with aqua, peach and lavender. She adds jewel tones of garnet red, carnelian orange and sapphire blue, and metallic touches with silks and velvets.

Don’t forget flower power

Sally Sirkin Lewis, Inglewood

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They’re pretty, grow in a variety of colors, change with the season and add a living element to a room. She likes to dress up chocolate brown and ivory interiors with ice-blue delphiniums and chartreuse orchids. When pink peonies are in season, display them in a vase or float the blooms in a shallow bowl filled with gray or brown river rock.

Direct color

Donna Livingston, L.A.

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She puts complementary earth tones, slate blue and espresso brown on large upholstered pieces and walls, and accents with a shiny gold Buddha, bright celadon urns tucked in a bookcase or a cherry lacquered box on a coffee table.

Go natural

Mickey Muennig, Big Sur

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He appreciates the way the color of rusted metal and sustainable woods, especially teak-like Ipa wood from Brazil, look over time.

Remember, neutral still works

Joe Nye, L.A.

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He used tobacco, café au lait and espresso brown as a backdrop for a collection of contemporary paintings and antique Oriental rugs. “When cobalt blue is right, it’s right,” he says. “Yellow can be fabulous. Red is amazing. But I’m also working on a magnificent contemporary house where the only color we’re using is white and absolutely no color anywhere, not even in the paintings.”

— Janet Eastman