How to Choose Abstract Art by Colour: Building a Palette for Your Home

By Simon Kenny | 9 min read

The first three parts of this series covered where a painting should hang, how it should be lit, and how it changes a room once it is placed. None of them addressed the decision that actually comes first: how do you choose a painting’s colour?

Choosing abstract art by colour means selecting a painting for the full range of related tones built into its surface, not matching one dominant hue to a cushion or a rug. An original is usually built in several layers of paint, an underpainting, one or more glazes, and a final pass of texture and highlight, each of which catches daylight differently throughout the day.

A flat colour swatch will not tell you how a painting behaves on your wall over time. Most buyers still choose art the way they choose a cushion, holding a sample against the sofa and looking for the closest match. That works for soft furnishings, which coordinate easily and can be replaced within a season. A painting is not a swatch; it is a fixed structure of colour likely to stay on the wall for a decade, so it is worth being meticulous and intentional in your choice.

How Do You Choose Abstract Art by Colour Instead of Simply Matching It?

Colour matching asks whether a single dominant shade coordinates with an existing scheme, a reasonable question for a cushion or lampshade, both cheap to replace if the answer changes. Matching a painting the same way misses the point of buying an original, because its value comes largely from tones you cannot name at a glance: the darker ground beneath a bright passage of colour, or the thin warm line where two glazes overlap. None of that shows up in a five-second comparison against a paint chip.

The first article in this series explains why a painting functions as the heartbeat of a home rather than a decorative accent, and an earlier piece on colour psychology in abstract art sets out the research on why warm and cool hues affect mood. This article focuses on a narrower, practical concept. It looks at the family of colours within a painting, rather than one overarching shade.

A painting built from a related collection of tones, teal shifting into moss green, moss into ochre, gives the eye somewhere to move. A painting built from one dominant, near-flat colour reads as a single statement and stays that way. Neither is wrong; a large flat-colour canvas can anchor a room powerfully. But a layered canvas changes character across a British winter and summer in a way a flat one might struggle, because there is more internal colour for the light to draw out.

A few practical checks before buying on colour:

• Start from the room’s function instead of its existing soft furnishings. You can take more risks with colour in a hallway you pass through rather than a bedroom you fall asleep in.
• Count the distinct tones in a canvas before you commit to it. Two or three related tones give range without competing; five or more unrelated tones tend to fight on a domestic wall.
• Be cautious of a painting that matches your existing decor exactly. If nothing in it surprises you on the first viewing, it is unlikely to hold your attention past the first few weeks.

Why Does Layered Colour Behave Differently From a Single Hue?

None of my paintings are built from a single opaque layer. Most start with an underpainting, often in a warm earth tone such as burnt umber or raw sienna, which shows through later layers as warmth or shadow. Over that goes one or more glazes, thin, transparent films of oil colour that shift the tone beneath without hiding it, then a final pass of thicker, opaque paint applied with a palette knife for texture and highlight. A canvas that reads as cool blue from across a room can still carry a warm underpainting, visible only up close where the paint is thin.

The practical effect is that a flat, single-tone canvas holds one mood consistently, while a layered canvas shifts as the light in the room shifts. What matters here is the visible result: a warm underlayer or a metallic highlight can look muted at midday and far more prominent under the lower, angled light of early morning or late afternoon.

Tate’s definition of abstract art holds that colour, shape and form carry emotional meaning independently of subject matter, which is why the internal relationships between hues do so much of a painting’s work.
Source: Tate, ‘Abstract art’, tate.org.uk, accessed 2026.

This is also the clearest practical difference between an original and a print. A print reproduces one fixed, flat record of colour. An original has physical depth, layers of paint that light can pass through and reflect back from at different points, so its appearance genuinely changes with the light rather than simply looking flatter over time.

Living With Colour That Changes Through the Day

I would encourage anyone choosing a painting for their home to envisage it at two different times of day to understand the full scope of its impact. Morning light in most UK homes runs cool and slightly blue; by late afternoon it turns warm and golden.

This variability is not something to be concerned about. A well-chosen, layered painting is more interesting precisely because it does not look identical at 8am and 6pm. Professional colour forecasters have noted a broader shift toward this kind of depth in interiors generally, away from single, flat colour blocks.

Farrow & Ball’s 2026 colour predictions favour faded, complex terracottas and blush-pink apricots over flat, single-note colour, with Naperon No. 315 named as the brand’s pick for the year, a signal that interior taste is moving toward nuanced, layered colour generally, not only in paintings.
Source: Farrow & Ball 2026 predictions, via Homes & Gardens, homesandgardens.com, accessed 2026.

In practice, this means judging a painting on its quieter passages as much as its loudest ones. The single bright mark that first catches your eye in a gallery rarely keeps a painting interesting three years on; it is usually the more muted colour beneath it, noticed only once you have lived with the piece for a while, that does that work.

Building a Colour Journey From Room to Room

Once colour is chosen by range rather than by match, the next practical question is how several paintings sit together across a whole home. I advise against forcing every room into one palette. It is more useful to work room by room, matching a painting’s colour range to what that particular space is used for.

A hallway or landing, a space you pass through rather than sit in, can take a more complex, layered piece such as Credence, a 120 x 100cm oil combining warm earth tones with serene blues, since you will see it mostly in short glances. A study or reading room, where the mood needs to turn inward, suits deeper, more atmospheric colour, closer to Evoking the Heavens, which explores elemental colour and depth at a slower pace. Where a hallway opens into a living space, a more luminous piece such as Muster, built around a vertical rise of colour and light, can lift the energy between the two.

These paintings do not need to share a palette, and in most homes I work with, they do not. What connects them is that each was chosen for the specific room it hangs in, following the same logic I set out for choosing a first statement piece in the opening article of this series.

Simon Kenny’s work is held in private and corporate collections across fourteen countries, including placements such as Saatchi & Saatchi’s London headquarters and the JW Marriott Bengaluru, environments where colour has to do very different work depending on the room.
Source: Simon Kenny Art, simonkennyart.com, accessed 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should every room in my home follow the same colour palette?

No. A considered home usually holds several colour worlds rather than one uniform scheme. Choose each painting for what that room needs: a calming hallway piece and an energising dining room piece can coexist happily.

What is the difference between colour matching and choosing a colour world?

Colour matching selects a single shade to sit beside existing decor. Choosing a colour world selects a painting for its full internal range of related tones, which has more effect on a room’s mood than one matched hue on its own.

Do multi-toned abstract paintings suit small rooms?

Yes, provided the tones are related rather than competing. A layered painting with a coherent colour family can make a small room feel considered rather than cluttered, whereas several unrelated flat-colour pieces tend to fight for attention.

How does natural light change the way a painting’s colours read?

Cooler morning light and warmer afternoon light bring out different tones within a layered painting. Viewing a piece at more than one time of day before buying gives a truer sense of how it will live in your home.

Is an original painting worth choosing over a colour-matched print?

For colour depth, yes. An original is built in physical layers of paint that genuinely respond to changing light, while a print reproduces one fixed moment of colour and will not shift in the same way across the day.

A Final Thought

Choosing art by colour is less about finding a perfect match and more about judging how much colour a painting contains, and how that reads as light changes across a day and a year. A flat hue is easy to match and easy to tire of; a painting with real range takes longer to read, which is why it holds up over time. That is the thread through all four parts of this series: placement, light, hanging height and colour each affect how a painting performs in a home you live in, not just how it looks on the day you buy it.

If you would like to see how layered colour behaves in the room you are picturing, browse the current collection, filtered by colour, or get in touch about a bespoke commission built around your own light and your own walls.