How to pick a paint colour you’ll love, even years later

Choosing a paint colour tends to be difficult for most people, simply because the choices are seemingly limitless. Primary colours, secondary ones, lights, darks, off-whites, warm and cool tones.
Here are a few tips to make choosing a colour easier and ensure that you’ll want to live with your choice for years to come. 

Finding Inspiration

When you’re thinking about choosing a new colour, look around you. Even if you cannot look at your friends’ homes, local shops and offices, or even a paint store, there is inspiration everywhere. Look around in nature, maybe you like the colour of a particular flower or leaf. Look at common household items. Look in magazines. Anywhere you find colours, you could find your best choice. With modern colour matching technology, any colour can be turned into paint.

Use of Room

As you decide on your paint colour, think about the room you’re planning to paint. If you want it to make a dramatic statement, a bright, bold colour may be the way to go. Looking to create a calm, serene space, like in a bedroom, will call for calm tones, that can sooth you to sleep. There are no hard and fast rules but think about how you feel with a colour and if that matches what you will use the room for.

What Exists

If you’re only looking to paint one wall, creating an accent wall, then be sure to consider the other colour(s) in the room. Likewise, look at your furniture for what will match or contrast, pending the look you want. For example, if you have grey toned furniture, you may not want to go with a brown toned paint.

Test it Out

Paint chips aren’t just to help you find your ideal colour. Take them home and hang them in the room you’re planning to paint. Look at them throughout the day to see the colour you’ve chosen in different lighting. Move them to different walls on different days. If you’re still unsure, lots of paint stores offer a sample jar of paint for only a few dollars; use the sample jar to paint a few areas and really see what you think of the colour. Or paint one wall – if you like it, you’ve got the job started. If you don’t, you can start over. You might even decide that you like the colour, but not enough to be surrounded by it, so now you have an accent wall that you can easily change down the road.

Accessorize Instead

If you’re thinking about a colour that’s not your typical paint choice, and you’re hesitating, try some accessory pieces instead. A few throw pillows, a frame, vases, artwork, platters, figurines, anything in the colour you’re considering. Seeing bits of the colour in your space may be enough for you, but you may also decide you love it and can make the commitment to paint.

And Now What

If you do settle on a colour, start to paint, and decide you really cannot live with it, some stores offer the option to re-tint the leftovers. A word of caution here, pending how much you’ve used, it may be hard to get to an exact colour match, some colours cannot be made from others (ie. If you tried black, now want cream, it’s not going to happen!), and you may need to buy more paint to get the room completed. If you do make a colour change, be sure to mix all the pails of paint together for a consistent colour across all the walls.

Colour is a personal decision and it’s not permanent. So have some fun, choose a colour you love and freshen up your space. Time will tell if you love it, and if you don’t, just get the paint roller out again!