Starfire Direct prides itself on offering the best in fire glass and fire places on the market. We know full well that while some clients have a clear image in their mind of what it is they wish to achieve exactly, others might be at the beginning of their design process and need some guidance with how best to mix their glasses or what kind of materials to purchase.
We each find things attractive or pleasing to the eye that might differ from the next. While designers, artists, and architects work and study their entire lives to grab and keep the attention of the majority of people. One designer’s color choices may not mesh well with the actual execution of their plans. For a person who has a rustic country aesthetic sense for their home, cool colored fire-glass added to a fireplace might throw the entire look off. Like painting the walls of your home or laying out gardening plans when updating your yard’s landscaping, planning and research must be done to make sure you’re choosing the right colors for your needs.
Generally, in interior and exterior home design, the trend of keeping to analogous color schemes is one way to help with choosing colors. An analogous color scheme is one that keeps to one quarter of the color wheel as observed in the color wheel diagram above to the left.
Many designers choose analogous color groups to prevent colors from clashing with each other, as colors that are next to each other on the color wheel have similar properties and base colors. These color groups will continue throughout the entire room but can lead to a boring end result if not varied enough. To prevent this, many interior designers will use a “focal point feature,” that is eye-grabbing by utilizing a complimentary color to the rest of the design. A complimentary color is one that is on the direct opposite side of the color wheel from the main color you used in your design. (As observed in the color wheel diagram in the center.)
A fire feature like one of our fireplaces or fire pits work well, in that the glass itself can be used as the complimentary color in your design. Delicate balance must be met between the compliment and the dominant colors. The compliment can only touch on eye-focal points and not dominate the overall design. Think of an all-white room, if we were to compliment the white with black fire glass in our fireplace, the fireplace becomes a focal point and center of the room simply by our eye being drawn to the contrast in color.
More advanced color schemes usually complicate home design as simplicity and clean function are the latest trends designers are following. Think of the colors already utilized in your home. What is the paint color used on the walls? Picture frames? Does your existing fireplace use warm or cool colored stones? All of these are important factors when buying the right colored fire glass for your needs.
Warm colors are those that “feel,” warm such as red, orange, and yellow. Cool colors are those that “feel,” cool like blue, purple, and green. (As observed in the color wheel diagram above on the right.) Neutral tones such as black, white, and grey have no temperature identity of their own unless coupled with another color; then these neutrals take on the identity of their compliment. This all happens in the eye. Because the eye is constantly fighting against an overabundance of stimulation, it has to identify what is most important to focus on.
Color is an important visual in our lives. The colors we surround ourselves with can affect our moods. A person might love the color pink but find it overwhelming when painted on the walls without ever realizing. That is because of the inherent strong relationship between the colors red that is the base element of “pink,” and can bring out some of the stronger emotions such as passion, power and even anger. While pink is soft and pretty, that slight red core-color if we are overwhelmed by it. Strong colors like red and orange should best be reserved for focus features in a room or outside. Fire glass is a wonderful focus feature that it is eye catching even when it is not lit and would be the best place to bring in strong complimentary or accent colors to bring that pop in a room design.
  
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Another handy tool we offer is our Fire Glass Calculator it can help you order the proper amount for your fireplace and fire pit.
