Forget painter’s remorse. Check out below for choosing the perfect paint colors for your home.
Paint can set the tone for a room before you’ve even added the furnishings or décor making it even more important to choose the right color. If you’re wondering where to begin, one place to start is by looking around your home. Some of your favorite decor pieces have color palettes already built in to help inspire color throughout your home. Pick a favorite accessory piece to work the color palette around, whether it be a painting, patterned accent pillow, vase, or furniture upholstery. Another way is to look at all those pictures you’ve saved on your phone. Are they monochromatic and softer hues or is there contrast and bold colors that have you swooning over them?
If you’re starting with a blank slate, whether moving into a new home or changing your furnishings for a total refresh, start by looking at the colors outside your windows. Bringing colors from the outside landscape into your home is a great approach. You’ll find that these earth-tone colors naturally work well together and create a soothing space inside as well.
Open floor plans
In today’s open-plan homes, where kitchens, living rooms, and dining rooms are often one large space, color is used to help define interiors and create focal points in relatively featureless rooms. The trick, of course, is figuring out how to pick paint colors to use and where to put them. Just because you opt for a soft shade of greige in one room, doesn’t mean you need to swath every room with that color from crown molding to baseboards. However, your selections do need to make sense and flow from one room to another. In spaces like foyers and hallways one way to go is to use neutral shades or a lighter option than used in other rooms. For example, if you have a navy living room, paint the connecting hallways a light gray with a blue undertone. It’s a nice transition in tone and less contrast as you move from space to space.
Moldings and Doorways
For subtle emphasis try moving away from white, and paint moldings, doorways just one or two shades lighter or darker than the primary wall. It’s a subtle shift in color but it really brings your eye to the detail adding dimension. Painting walls white and moldings a color from an accessory in the room makes for a bold contrast and a striking statement unique to you.
Treat Your Ceiling Like a Fifth Wall
Though sticking to “ceiling white” generally makes a space feel airy, a similar effect can be achieved by painting the ceiling the same shade or a lighter shade of the wall color. Just take the paint sample card that has your wall color as the middle choice, for example, then go one or two choices lighter for the ceiling color. The result will be a room that appears larger, because the contrast between wall color and ceiling color has been softened. In a smaller room, such as a bathroom, ceilings can be painted the same color as the walls to make it look bigger.
Accent Walls
Where rooms are relatively featureless, painting an “accent wall” in a vivid hue where the others are white or neutral can add a dramatic, contemporary edge. Or, when painting the primary walls a soft color, try the accent wall three shades darker. The accent wall will still give the room some punch, but it’s not as dramatic.
Paint Chips and Color Samples
Use fan decks and paint chip samples to help narrow down your selection. Once you’ve picked three colors, you’re in the home stretch. Next, hold paint chips against the wall to see which works best in your space. Painting a small swatch on your wall using a color sample is highly suggested and a great way to test the color and see how the shade looks throughout the day with natural lighting and your home furnishings. Factors such as sun exposure, your decor, lighting, and existing architectural details all play a role in how a paint color works in your room. You won’t be able to see whether they harmonize unless you give colors a chance to play together first.
Taking a stab at technology
Most paint brands now have programs that can help you select paint colors and show you how they will look in your space. They can also ensure you don’t need a mid-project trip to the paint store. One resource is Valspar’s paint calculator. By simply typing in the measurements of the space and product, it helps estimate the amount of paint you will need to complete the job. Sherwin Williams offers free virtual color consultations where one of their experts will review your project, provide color recommendations, and send chip samples out to you.
When two heads are not always better than one
Choosing a paint color on your own is hard enough but selecting a paint color with someone whose opinion differs from yours, well, can make things a bit more difficult. One possible solution is to have each individual narrow down their top color choices, bring the shades together, and then narrow down from these options. If you’re still in a stalemate, consider consulting a color expert who can help narrow down selections and even pull together a paint color scheme based on your combined personal styles.
No excuses
Gone are the days of letting blah walls sit plain for far too long because you don’t know where to begin with selecting paint colors. With this paint plan, you’ll be ready to roll in no time.
