How to Choose a Paint Color

Choosing a paint color for your walls is critical to the overall feel and design of the room. The wrong choice will be apparent quickly, but will require a great deal of patience, time and resources to repair. To avoid this, be sure to pick the right color the first time.

Paint Choice Fundamentals

Paint comes in any color, but the most common wall color is white. Unfortunately, this is the least decorative wall color for design purposes. White walls can be suitable in any home, but they will not give your room the completed feel that color would.

Matte and satin paints are best in most rooms with glossy paint suitable in kitchens and bathrooms where it helps to repel water. Paints with texture and special techniques are simple to learn and can produce a designer’s effect.

Design a Room

When selecting a paint color, your first step is to design the room overall. What sort of room are you creating? What furniture will be in the room? What is your focus in the room – a fireplace? Wall décor? Find inspiration in magazines or websites so that you have an idea of what you would like your finished product to resemble.

Explore Color Families

Once you have a feel for your room, you can begin working in color families. Red and pink paint colors are exciting while blue paint colors are cool and soothing. Greens are comforting and yellows are invigorating. You may prefer the neutrality of browns or grays, or want something truly unique such as purple. Look at your design and find the color family that works best with your image of the final product.

Collect Paint Chips

Your next stop is to collect paint chips or samples from a paint store. Do not select the paint inside the store without first taking the samples home to see how they look against your furnishing and other colors of the room. Gather a full range of colors in your selected color family as you may discover that you want to try a deep forest green when you had originally be considering a muted olive.

Mix and Match

Layout your paint chips in the room with the blinds open to let in the sun. Paint chips are small, but they will give you a rough idea of what you’d be working with. Hold the colors next to your pictures and furniture – do some work better than others? Narrow your choices to two or three and get a second opinion if possible.

Make the Choice

Finally, take a deep breath and select the color that appeals to you the most yet works best in the room. If you simply can’t decide between two colors, get a small can of each from the paint store and paint a section of wall to see how it dries and looks in the room. You can then determine which is best and paint over the section of color that you won’t be using.

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