How To Pick The Perfect Paint Color
The truth is that I can’t pick the perfect paint color for you. What I can do is tell you how YOU can pick the perfect paint color, and it starts with looking around at the elements of your room and really thinking about your lighting.
I once dragged an 8 x 10 gray rug home and put it in my living room only to find that the next morning it had turned blue. The problem was that I had looked at it in the store, in artificial lighting, hung vertically on a rack. It wasn’t in MY home, with MY lighting, laid horizontally on MY floor. We need light to see color and, therefore, color can change depending on the type of light that it is exposed to. When considering paint colors, you must consider whether you are painting a dark room, one that gets lots of sun, a small or large room, and what the other color elements of the room will be. Walls and floors are the largest color “carriers” in a room so one needs to be prepared for a low, medium or high octane experience depending on what color goes where.
The biggest problem I see with clients trying to go it alone is that the ones who can handle color tend to choose colors that are just too intense for walls. I will tell you that it doesn’t take a lot of color in a room to make the room feel colorful. You can take a room with neutral-colored furniture and add a colorful rug and some throw pillows and the average person will call it a colorful room. It doesn’t take much. If you stick to lighter, less intense, more sophisticated choices your room will feel less like a failed pre-school project and more like a deliberately creative, brag-worthy haven that can blend seamlessly with any furnishings. Remember that bold color locks you in and can limit your furniture choices, and intense color, with all of its energy, can be the furthest thing from calming. Do you want to be in the Monet room or the Matisse one?
Once you narrow down the color family you’d like to explore, the next step is to get a taste of it on your walls. You can get small paint swatches for free at most hardware stores, or you can get larger ones online from most of the major paint retailers. I highly recommend the larger ones and will tell you that it’s worth the money to not make a big color mistake. Once you have your swatches, you’ll need to tape them to a white piece of paper and hang them in your room. The white paper will let you see the true color while allowing you to move it around the room to different walls so you can see it in sun, shade, in corners, and with nighttime lighting. There is also samplize.com which will send you a 12 x 12” peel-and-stick sample from Benjamin Moore, Sherwin Williams, Farrow + Ball or Home Depot in your desired color. The goal is to get the color on the wall, in your home, with your particular lighting, and online tools are just no substitute. If the same swatch keeps feeling good to you in all lighting situations, you’ve got yourself a winner.
From here you can either decide to press go or you can take an additional safety step and purchase a sample size “pot” of actual paint to try out. This is the absolute, fool-proof way to know if you’re gonna be in like, or in love. As for the type of paint, there are some great tutorials online, and the standard is to use flat/matte for ceilings, matte/eggshell/pearl for walls, satin/semi-gloss for trim. There are many great colors to choose from and this process should help you decide if you want the feel of Ozark Shadows or Pismo Dunes. And I know that in my next life I’d like to come back as the paint naming goddess since my dream is to put Baby Cheeks and Toasted Mouse together in a fabulous soft orange/warm gray nursery. Colorful dreams to you!