Yellow may brighten up a hallway, but forget shades of sunshine in the bedroom.

Have your teenage children set up camp in the bathroom? Are family mealtimes void of conversation? Are you lacking the get up and go in the mornings of days gone by? Perhaps the problem stems from the hues in your home.

Slapping your favourite colours on the walls of every room in your house isn’t necessarily the way to ensure balance and harmony in the family home. Before you contemplate a lick of paint for a change of ambience, there are some key considerations.

Angela Wright, colour psychologist, shares her words of wisdom for choosing the ideal palette for your home.

Living room

Virtually any colour will work in a general living area because of the diversity of attitudes towards this part of the home. It may be that this room provides a sanctuary, in which case soft blues and greens would be very supportive.

If relationships are going through a difficult phase, and this is the common ground on which you meet, the calming properties of pink or soft blue will be most helpful, but be wary of using red in a potential war zone!

If the living room is a space for meditation, make sure there is some violet somewhere.

Kitchen

Yellow is an excellent choice for the kitchen, because it encourages creativity and optimism and it lights the atmosphere.

Orange stimulates hunger and so will encourage healthy appetites. Kitchens inevitably get hot so red should be used very carefully.

Blue will suppress that physical hunger and also the desire to produce a wonderful meal so should be avoided; also if you have a large kitchen where people tend to congregate, blue is not particularly convivial; green would be a better choice to cool down the atmosphere.

Dining Room

It would be better to exclude yellows, as emotional stimulation is not good for the digestion. Although blue is not a stimulating colour, the dining room could benefit from its soothing effect, especially for sufferers of chronic heartburn or acid indigestion.

Derivatives of red and orange encourage lively discussion and are good for warming up a drafty room.