At work, Jayme Meyer creates color palettes to please her clients. But at home, the designer for Martha O'Hara Interiors (www.oharainteriors .com) can show her true colors.

Meyer loves strong, saturated hues and splashes them freely around her small St. Paul bungalow. Her kitchen is painted a deep, grapey purple, and her bedroom is hot coral pink, a hue the Pantone Color Institute recently dubbed Honeysuckle and declared the Color of the Year for 2011.

She's lived in the home about six years and has repainted every room. "Paint is such an easy, economical fix," she said. Now she's starting to acquire furniture and accessories, relying in part on the Martha O'Hara showroom in St. Louis Park, which carries discounted designer furniture that has been used for staging and home tours.

Meyer likes mirrors, crystals, metallics and other reflective elements. "I'm always attracted to mirrors -- they make a room feel bigger," she said. "The more bling, the more color, the better. Life's too short."

She shared her tips for incorporating big colors into small spaces without overdoing it.

Big picture: "Each space is so unique, depending on the ceiling height, the windows, the lighting," Meyer said. "People overlook how those little details make a difference. Every room needs a different approach."

Star Tribune, Star Tribune
Nesting, Jayme Meyer uses bold color and large shapes in her 1950's house.

In her upstairs bedroom, for example, she limited the hot pink Honeysuckle color to two walls and painted the low sloping walls cream. "If you did the whole room, you'd be Honeysuckled out."

Keep accents neutral: Meyer's bright purple kitchen doesn't overwhelm because it's the only strong color in the room. She painted her wood cabinets off-white to match her countertops. And for artwork, she hung large-scale pieces in black and white to break up the purple. The same strategy applies in her bedroom, where she balanced the hot-pink walls by keeping accent hues all taupe and black.

Harmonize: Meyer's living room contains the old chocolate brown sofa she's had since college and two new charcoal gray chairs. "I'm trying to phase out the brown," she said. But the unlikely pieces work together, thanks to geometric-print window treatments that combine both those hues, plus cream. Meyer also painted super-wide horizontal stripes, in graduating shades of soft, grayed-out purple, on her walls to help bridge the two color families.

Kim Palmer • 612-673-4784