Organize Your Books by Color

• Many of us have large collections of books that live on shelves in our living rooms. These shelves can get messy and create a block of muddy, indistinct color. How to remedy this? Color-code the books. You can choose to create a rainbow wall of books by beginning with red and progressing through the spectrum to violet. You can also choose to work with the room's color palette and display only the books whose spine colors fit into it. The latter option may leave your shelves more barren than you'd like; fill in any gaps with houseplants, or display treasured items that go with your color scheme.
  
  

Use Wallpaper

• Wallpaper has been out of fashion for the past several years, but it's coming back strong with stylish new patterns and muted colors, rather than the brown and yellow palette of the 1970s or the safe-looking florals of our grandmas' homes. It's a way to make a big color statement on one or all of your living room walls. Let your wallpaper's palette guide the color selections in the rest of the room: With a gray and ivory floral print--as seen in this cafe--keep your furniture and carpet within that palette, then add an accent color, such as acid green, for decor and accessories.
  
  

Let Art Inspire Your Palette

• Choose your color palette from a piece of art you want to hang in your living room. Let's take this picture of the Aristotle bike from Urban Outfitters as an example. The colors in the photograph are pale gray, baby blue, white, vibrant orange and bright yellow, with little bits of black. You can use that palette in two distinct ways. The usual way is to keep your walls, floors and furniture in the gray-blue-white category, and use the orange and yellow for pops of color around the room, such as a vase, a clock or items on small wall shelves. If you're a little bolder with color, make your walls, floors and furniture bright orange and yellow, and use the gray, blue and white as accent colors. You'll probably need to keep the furniture solid colors, rather than use a pattern. The same goes for walls--paint them one color--and rugs, which shouldn't be overly patterned.
  
  You can also use a piece of art purely as inspiration for a color palette and forgo hanging it on your wall.