Building a home is not just perfecting the foundations, locating it in wondrous views and investing digits to fulfill an ideal house for your family. More to that is experimenting and decorating your home to be a relaxing and comfortable place for you after a long and challenging day.

Primavera Residences, the first eco-friendly condo complex in Cagayan de Oro, recently hosted a free interior design workshop with the theme Color Basics: Choosing the Right Colors for your Home at its function hall. The workshop – in partnership with Truly Wealthy Realty Corporation, one of Cagayan de Oro’s property brokers and Primavera Residences’ top performing realty broker in 2013 – was conducted by one of Cagayan de Oro’s darlings in making homes your favorite comfort zones, Anna Christina Sagarbarria, fpid.

Sagarbarria is a licensed interior designer specializing in renovations and home-makeovers and designing for retail and commercial spaces in Cagayan de Oro and Manila. During the workshop, participants learned the basics of choosing the right colors for their home and what their favorite colors say about them.

Have you ever wondered why you are easily attracted to red signage of restaurants and food chains? It is because our body reacts immediately to the power and strength of the color red. Sagarbarria explained that we get an instant physiological response from the color red that catches our attention and makes us pause for a moment. Red is the color to target your consumers. For babies who are less active, paint his/her room red and trust that within a day or two, you’ll be busy panting and running after them because after black and white, red is attractive to them. For homey accents in your house, just add a bit of red to make it more appealing to the eyes. Red screams. Red is not the color for rest. It is a color for activity. People who like red are self-confident, unafraid to take risks, extroverted, has a strong sex drive, competitive and impulsive.

Add white to your red and it will soften your eyes with the calmness and cheerfulness of the color pink. The same with red, it elevates your heart rate and blood pressure but in a much lesser sense. According to Sagarbarria, when putting accents in your home, pink is best partnered with blue and other warm colors. It is a matter of balance. People who like pink are charming, refined and lady-like. They are less showy than the reds.

“Yellow signifies energy and light. Associated with comedy, hope and happiness, yellow lightens up your homey experience. It gives you time to relax and enjoy your day,” said Sagarbarria. “Most people who like yellow are more likely to be considered as imaginative, original, idealistic, creative, often spiritual and usually intuitive,” she added.

Orange is radiant and hot. It is the hottest of all colors even more than red. It signifies heat, sunset and fire. A home with orange accents is more likely to be bright and energetic. It brings more life to furniture and spaces in your home. People who like orange are more likely to be connected with being adventurous, enthusiastic, and agreeable. They are likely to work and play hard.

Blue on the other hand, is associated with being constant and eternal. Scientifically speaking, the color blue makes you calmer and feel better.

“When you want to rest, surround yourself with blue and avoid warm colors. For those who have babies, color their room with blue to help them sleep better and wake up at the right time,” advised Sagarbarria. People who enjoy the calmness of blue are trusting, cool, confident, sensitive to the needs of others, can easily form attachments, perseverant and peaceful, conservative, even-tempered, and reliable.

Green signifies the love of nature. It brings freshness and stillness. Green is best described as ‘the great harmonizer,’ the color of balance and harmony. According to Sagarbarria, green is best for the kitchen as it gives more patience to the cook that brings out the best in his/her dish. People who love green are stable, fastidious, kind, generous, model citizen, caring companion, loyal friend, faithful and a lover.

The most enigmatic and mysterious of all color that signifies passion and magic is purple. It is both the excitement of red and tranquility of blue. Aside from being a color of the royalty, it is also the color of artists, eccentrics, designers, performers and conformists. Purple makes children jolly. Light purple is also great for the dining room. People who love purple have the aura of mystery and intrigue. They are enigmatic, creative, charming, keenly observant and supersensitive.

Black is either sophisticated or rebellious. Defining its radiance and sophistication, it is un-ignorable and mysterious.

“When buying furniture in black, make sure to have white or light-colored accents. Black, white and red are popular to combine with,” said Sagarbarria. “People who love black are witty, clever, prestigious, and put very high importance on personal security. Also, they are sexy, dignified and serious yet classy.”

White symbolizes heavenly joy and wholesomeness. Despite being divine, virginal and unsullied, it is not advisable to paint your office or work area in white.

“It is tiring for the eyes,” explained Sagarbarria. “Go with warmer shades to finish your walls to get productivity going. To make it even classier and elegant, add wood tones to make the room warmer.”

People who love white are considered as self-sufficient, uncompromising, and usually immaculate in their clothing and homes.

This second interior design workshop was organized after the successful run of Prima de Mayo at Primavera Residences last May. Prima de Mayo was the first design workshop jointly organized by Primavera Residences and Truly Wealthy Realty Corp. featuring Sagarbarria as resource speaker.

Primavera Residences is a twin-tower, 10-storey green mixed-use development located in Uptown Cagayan de Oro. It comprise residential, commercial and office spaces for sale and rent. All units at Tower 1 are ready for occupancy. Because of its many green features, Primavera Residences has received several recognitions from international award-giving bodies. It recently won in the 2014-2015 Asia Pacific regional competition of the prestigious International Property Awards in the Best Mixed-use Development category for the Philippines.

For inquiries about upcoming events at Primavera Residences, call (63) 917 7921080 or visit www.primaveraresidences.com.