Palettes Inspired by Pennsylvania Seasons

As one of the most picturesque locations in the entire country, Southeastern Pennsylvania provides inspiration for a wealth of beautiful seasonal palettes to bring into your home. The feeling of summer colors when it’s cold, or an autumn motif all year round, can give a sense of place to your house, and make it part of the changing landscape. Here are just a few ideas to think about that might suit your seasonal tastes.

Why Does Autumn Work as a Year-Round Seasonal Palette?

Autumn is one of Pennsylvania’s most glorious seasons, and it’s famous for having just the right mixture of cold and warm days to make for an extended period of brilliant foliage. A prolonged fall season is one great reason to celebrate your location, especially on your walls. The warm colors of autumn, particularly in family rooms and bedrooms where you’ll want to get cozy in the cold weather, can help combat the chill outside when the days start getting dark early.

Another good reason to think “fall” for your walls is the traditional colonial color palette: it’s both rich in history and seems to be plucked right off the trees in your backyard. The rust reds, yellow ochres, slate blues, and even the olive greens of colonial Pennsylvania seem to be drawn directly from the autumn season, and its historical use makes it a perfect match with the established architecture of the region.

There are some beautiful and unexpected colors outside the traditional fall palette that mesh well with an autumn theme, too, and can be used in conjunction, like shadowy plums and warm grays that echo the bark and branches when the leaves start to fall. In fact, there are actually more colors that mesh well with the warm colors of fall than with cooler colors.

One more reason to implement fall colors in your home is its association with the “entertainment season.” For many, autumn is the main season for hosting, with family and friends flocking together for Thanksgiving, Halloween parties, even back-to-school events with classmates and parents in the home. Because you may be expecting more visitors in the fall than any other time of year, it makes sense to choose colors that bring the season inside and make the space all the more welcoming for guests during this time. The colors will then bring up pleasant associations of this togetherness all year round.

Exploring Other Seasons

Because the seasonal colors of Pennsylvania change so dramatically over the year, there are a slew of distinctive seasonal statements to choose from that reflect the landscape around us. Of course, you don’t have to cover the entire house in the same colors; you can make a special room in your house call out a favorite season.

You might be a personal fan of winter colors, which can lend an icy, elegant style of classicism. It’s been a popular choice for many years, and for good reason: the pale blue recalls the clear sky, and white gives clear shadows and form to crown moldings and other details. Cool colors like this can lend a refreshing feel to a space.

Of course, if there’s one thing we’re familiar with in Pennsylvania, it’s lengthy winters. Sometimes you want to complement the snowy season with a similar palette, but other times it’s fun to offset the season with colors that bring some sun and brightness into our overlong winters. Summery palettes can keep the grey days cheerful, and blue can actually serve as both a winter and a summer color.

A spring palette brings the sweet, soothing nature of pale pastels and the energy of bright flower colors into a space. When looking for a spring color to splash your walls with, yellow is often a good choice—it’s subtle, light, and not overly dramatic.

Let Your Décor Shine with All-Season Backdrops

Sometimes you want a more neutral palette to serve as a flexible backdrop. In fact, this is often a wise choice, as people tend to switch out their accessories throughout the year to make a seasonal statement: cornucopias or other harvest-related centerpieces in the fall, the evergreen and bright lights of a Christmas tree in the winter, fresh flowers in the spring and summer. Family rooms and other common spaces perhaps see the most change throughout the year, along with the linens and pillows in bedrooms.

White is a natural backdrop color, and makes those summery corals and aquamarines you might have in your furniture or décor pop. Grey also provides a beautifully neutral space to fill with reflections of the changing temperatures and seasons. Grays are evocative of atmosphere in any region: gray is rain, a cloudy sky, a quiet pond. Gray gives a sense of repose and quiet elegance to formal spaces, and works well alongside other grey tones, or to offset bolder color choices.

Greige, a blend of gray and beige, is another subtle background tone that lets the other colors of the room take center stage, as does toque. The versatility of these hues can provide lots of opportunity for decorating creativity year-round.

The changing seasons are a big part of what makes this part of the world beautiful and special, and Nolan Painting is ready to bring their look and feel into your home. We’ve been helping our neighbors in Southeastern Pennsylvania for years to choose colors for their homes that evoke the things they love best. We are also experts at bringing those concepts to life, and our full-time, fully trained staff will prepare the surface and make any necessary patching and finishing prior to the paint job itself. We pride ourselves on a thorough job well done and we offer a free estimate to get you started on your new project. Let us know how we can work with you!