We love colour! It’s the easiest way to personalize and refresh any room. This year, it’s everywhere. Be bold and bring it home with these inspiring ideas.

1. Adore Your Floor

Photography: Living4Media

Painting the floor is definitely a bold move, but the rewards can be charming. Colour choice is everything and practically limitless: brighten with pastels, go theatrical and ravishing with black or navy blue, heat things up with red, or mix your own custom hue. For longer-lasting results, sand the floor first, use a durable brand of paint, and follow all application and drying time recommendations.

Paint It: Frosted Pomegranate 140B-7, Behr

2. Accent Colour

Photography: Living4Media

That nook, narrow wall and sloping ceiling are all golden opportunities for you to add a lovely pop of saturated colour to your space. In small doses, an accent colour can highlight an architectural element or visually define a space, like creating a reading nook within a larger living room. In this picture, for a bolt of brightness, lemon yellow adds zest and a lighthearted feel to formal architecture.

Paint It: Sun’s Glory, B22-4-0841-4 Beauti-Tone Home Hardware

3. Painterly Palettes

Photography: Press Loft, Mind the Gap

Colourful artwork – from high-contrast prints and photography to muted watercolours and vintage oil paintings – instantly transforms a room, adding beauty and character. Look for artful ways to group works (by colour, theme or medium) and carefully consider style and material of frames. This year’s trends include large format artwork, throwback themes, activist art (like feminist or environmentalist) and big abstract brush strokes.

4. Make a Statement

Photography: Press Loft, Wall Sauce

Murals are all the rage again, but this time around it’s all about refinement and high style, not circa ’70s Hawaiian beach scenes. In a space that boasts an otherwise minimalist aesthetic, a mural will inject a big dose of colour. Choose a stunning, ready-made mural created by an artist or, for the individualist, work with a company that transforms your own artwork or photos. Either way, a mural will instantly establish mood in a confident, bold way.

5. Step Lightly

Photography: Living4Media

Colours accentuate shapes and structural features, making stairways the ideal element to highlight with confident colour. A colourful runner or a coat of paint are traditional ways to brighten existing steps. Or you can go very Star Trek with blue glass steps lit from below with LED lighting. Not only does the space age staircase go from ho-hum passageway to striking centrepiece, but it also adds a safety feature in the most stylish of ways.

6. Magic Carpet

Photography: Press Loft, Carmine & Teal

Rugs are a time-honoured way to usher in colour and liven up a room. Even more, they add warmth underfoot, improve acoustics and give a room a finished, designer feel. Feeling uncertain about which style to choose? A subdued colour and pattern can create cohesion and pull mix-and-match furnishings together; alternately, go for busier patterns and vibrant tones to energize neutral furniture.