The “60-30-10” Rule Makes Decorating a Home Way Easier

One of the most common hurdles people come across when decorating a home is choosing the colors. Do you commit to something bold or play it safe and stick with neutrals? Then, even after you’ve chosen your dominant color in a space, you’re faced will all the other supplemental color decisions—from the color of the furniture to the textiles to the accent pieces. And without a background in design, you may not trust your own instincts to choose which colors go well together and curate a color palette that feels cohesive for your home. Luckily, there’s a simple, designer-approved trick that makes choosing colors for your home so much easier and far less intimidating: It’s called the 60-30-10 rule.

Below, learn more about this “rule”—which you should think of more as a helpful guide—and how you can utilize it in your home decorating adventures.

What Is the 60-30-10 Rule?

Don’t be intimidated by the numbers here—we promise the 60-30-10 rule is just a simple way to think about the colors in your home. “Your color palette can be sliced into three using the 60-30-10 rule: 60% of the space is a dominant color, 30% a secondary and complimentary color, and 10% an accent color,” Amber Guyton, one of our REAL SIMPLE HOME 2024 designers, says. In practice, that could look like a living room with a dominant color on the walls, sofas, or rugs, a secondary color on the window treatments and side furniture, and an accent color on smaller decor pieces and throw pillows.

“With these guidelines using colors of similar tones, you’re likely to be successful in combining multiple colors into a masterpiece,” Guyton says.

While Guyton is a self-described “bold color girl” who isn’t afraid to play with color in her spaces, she understands that the process of choosing and adding colors to your home can be intimidating. “However, it’s all about balance,” she says. The 60-30-10 rule has already laid out that balance for you, so that you can basically just fill in the blanks.

How to Use the 60-30-10 Rule in Your Home

The breakdown of the 60-30-10 rule will look a little different depending on the room you’re decorating—but you can use it throughout your home. For example, as mentioned above, the elements making up 60% of your living room might include the walls, a large sofa, and an area rug. In the kitchen, however, that 60% may instead apply to your cabinetry, while the 30% may include the backsplash, and the 10% could include the hardware and even your appliances.

So, start by filling in the 60-30-10 buckets based on the elements of the room you’re decorating. From there, you’ll have a better idea of how well your space already follows the rule, and which elements you might want to edit or swap out. And don’t forget to factor in the existing natural materials and tones around your space. For example, if there’s wooden trim all around the room, that might fall into the 30% or 10% color bucket, and you can use that wood tone to decide on a secondary or accent color in a similar tone.

When you’re choosing the colors to assign to each bucket—dominant, secondary, and accent—go ahead and look to the color wheel. For the highest contrast and pop, you can start with your dominant color (60%), then choose a complementary color from the opposite side of the color wheel as the secondary color (30%), then choose an accent color (10%) that is closer in position to the dominant color. If you’d like a more subtle look, however, you can choose three colors that are all fairly close to one another on the color wheel.

“Lastly, remember to have fun and don’t overthink it,” Guyton encourages. “The goal is to make the space feel good and create joy in your home. If that’s an emerald plaid sofa and magenta wallpaper with a cobalt chandelier, so be it. Embrace it and play with color to your heart’s (and home’s) content!”