DECORATING : Reading the Colors on the Wall

Color is key to every decorating scheme, and the largest surface for color in most all rooms is the walls. So when you think paint, think color.

But what color?

Even interior decorators who are trained in color theory and usage can’t agree on the best scheme or on what colors go best with others. So if the experts are at odds, pity the poor layman who dares to set foot in a paint store.

Leslie Harrington, corporate interior designer for Benjamin Moore Paint Co., says the question she is asked most often is: “What color scheme will make my rooms look bigger?”

Her answer: any color scheme with low contrast.

Harrington says making color choices can be made simpler by following a few basic rules:

* The human eye is attracted to the lightest color in the room. (When you switch on a lamp in a moderately dark room, your eye is pulled to the area with the light.)

* If you want to emphasize furnishings and accessories, keep them lighter or close to the same color value as the surrounding area. Harrington says to resist the urge to paint a room white to go with, say, pine furniture and a red floral chair. Rather, she suggests beige, oatmeal or cafe-au-lait as a wall color.

* Avoid very light walls and a very dark carpet. This combination is close to the most extreme contrast possible, which is white and black. “If we paint our walls the lightest color, people will look at our walls first rather than our things,” Harrington says.

* To devise a color scheme, copy a piece you like that happens to have three or four colors: a fabric, an area rug or a piece of art. Be sure to incorporate all of the colors. If you leave one out, she says, it “may be only a small part of the picture, but it could be the vital link that makes the whole scheme work.”

* Pick colors you can live with. Designers look at everything from a client’s skin tone to the clothes in the closet and dishes in the cupboard to come up with a color scheme with staying power. Do the same if you’re on your own.

Author Melanie Aves says that all colors--paint, fabric, carpet--must be sampled in the room where they’re to be used, because colors change with light and texture.

Melanie Aves and John Aves wrote “Interior Designers’ Showcase of Color,” (Rockport Publishers, 1994, $29). She surveyed 100 decorators on their attitudes and use of color for the book, which has some 250 schemes, all in color.

Designer hints include:

* Choose soft colors--avocado and pale yellow, for instance, rather than grass green and sunflower yellow--in rooms that get strong light for much of the day. In rooms with less natural light, bright green, yellow and red are likely to be pleasing rather than too intense.

Both Harrington and Aves say it isn’t necessary to redo an entire room to improve the color scheme. Something as simple as adding accessories in primary colors can perk it up.

In her book, Aves illustrates the point with a white sofa. Putting five large throw cushions, each covered in the same silk of a different color--red, green, yellow, orange, and blue--is like turning on a light. A similar effect is achieved in a child’s room by painting each of four doors on a large white wardrobe a different color--red, yellow, blue and green.

One good piece of advice on painting the walls when you’re not replacing the upholstery and carpet.

“Repaint your walls the same color, but one shade deeper,” Harrington says. “It will make the carpet look fresher and the upholstery look newer.”

Additionally, she says, if you followed the fad to paint one wall a different color from the others, repaint them all the same color.

“The walls will recede in importance,” she says, “and the furniture and accessories will become more prominent.”