What is the 60-30-10 Colour Rule?
Have you ever walked into a room and it just felt… right? Chances are, whether they knew it or not, the person who decorated it may well have been using a classic interior design secret: the 60-30-10 colour rule. It might sound technical, but we promise it’s a simple and creative guideline that can take the guesswork out of choosing your colour palette.
Think of it as a recipe for a perfectly balanced room. It’s a way to use colour confidently, ensuring your space feels cohesive and harmonious rather than chaotic or flat. So, if you're wondering where to start with a room refresh, this little rule will become your new best friend.
What is the 60-30-10 Rule and How to Apply This to Different Rooms in Your Home?
At its heart, the rule is all about creating balance. As our co-founder, Molly Freshwater, explains,
"The 60-30-10 rule is a great guide in interior design that helps with how to distribute colour proportions within your home. If you use this rule, 60% of the room should be your feature colour, 30% a secondary colour, and the remaining 10% by an accent colour. This guideline will create visual balance, and if you start with the pallet and get that right, your choices will enhance the overall aesthetic of the whole room."
Let’s look at what each number represents.
- Your 60% is the dominant colour, which acts as the main backdrop for everything else and is usually applied to the largest surfaces, like your walls.
- Next, your 30% is the secondary colour, which supports the primary colour and adds interest through furniture, curtains, or pieces of bedding.
- Finally, the 10% is your accent colour. This is the fun part. A little pop of personality used in smaller items like cushions, throws, and decorative accessories.
How to Choose Your Perfect Colour Combination
Now for the brilliant, creative bit: choosing your colours. This can feel like the biggest challenge, but Molly has some simple advice.
"This is a tricky question. It really depends on so, so, so many factors including location, room in the house, style of house, size of room. My advice would be to start with the most subtle colour in your pallet as the 60% and work up to the pop or bright colours being the 10%."
By choosing a calming, subtle shade like a soft neutral, a gentle sage green, or a warm off-white for your walls (the 60%), you create a versatile canvas. This allows you to be bolder with your secondary and accent colours, and it makes it much easier to refresh the look of your room later on without having to repaint everything.
60-30-10 Rule Examples for Different Rooms
The real magic of the 60-30-10 rule is seeing how it works in practice. As Molly notes, the rule is wonderfully consistent across different spaces. "I would apply the 60-30-10 colour rule as follows; it's similar for all rooms," she says.
In the living room, for example, the dominant colour might be the walls, with the secondary colour on the upholstery and accent pops coming from cushions and trims.
For the bedroom, Molly suggests the dominant colour could be the walls, the secondary colour seen in your duvet cover and curtains, and the final 10% of colour in your accent cushions and throws. This is a brilliant way to create a layered and inviting bed that looks perfectly balanced.
This logic extends throughout the home. In the kitchen, your cabinets could be the dominant shade, with appliances as the secondary, and a colourful splashback or some lovely tea towels as your accent.
As Molly adds, "I would apply the same rules in the garden too - I love a garden colour scheme."
Ultimately, the 60-30-10 colour rule for interior design is not a strict command but a friendly guide to help you create a home that feels beautifully balanced and completely you.
