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Color and texture give the objects in a room and the room itself definition. An easy way to understand this is to compare apples and oranges.

A bowl of apples sits on a table. The bowl is white porcelain. The table is covered in a white linen tablecloth. The bright red color of the apples stands out. The texture of the apples is smooth, sleek, shiny. This texture blends well with the cool softness of the white bowl and linen.

Replace the apples with oranges. The bright orange color pops just as the red of the apples did, but now the texture is grainy and rough, earthier. This texture now lends warmth to the white bowl and linen.

The glossy surface of the apples lends a modern feel to this vignette. The rutted surface of the oranges brings a more eclectic and complex sense to the scene. The texture of the bowl and linen remain the same, but are strongly influenced by the focal point, that being the fruit.

Using the same comparison, change the linen to blue, a deep royal blue. Picture the apples with their bright red shiny surfaces in the white bowl. The red doesn't pop nearly as much; the white bowl becomes the focal point for color. But the texture of the apples, of the bowl and the linen all coordinate with each other; they are sleek, smooth, cool.

Now substitute the apples for the oranges. The orange color competes for attention with the white of the bowl, but pops against the deep blue linen. The texture, though, is incongruous with the silkiness of the linen and the smoothness of the bowl. The texture of the orange is disruptive to the blue linen and white bowl because the linen and bowl are coordinated, and the orange is too rough a texture. It's conflict, not contrast.

Once the color of the linen changed, the dynamic changed. Change the linen to sunshine yellow and the oranges will look wonderful. Yellow is earthy, like the texture of the orange. The red of the apples can work with the yellow for contrast, but the sleek surfaces of the apples now compete with the homey, more vivid yellow.

Now mix it up. Put apples and oranges in the white bowl on a red and white checker tablecloth made of cotton. The look is contemporary country. The slickness of the apples works with the white bowl and the grainy oranges set off the cotton weave as well as the check pattern. Now the apples provide contrast in texture and coordinate in color with the tablecloth. Change the bowl to wood and the look is traditional country.

The above exercise demonstrates how

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