8 Tips on Choosing the Perfect Wall Color

Really great tips! Hopefully we can get into a house this year and I will be able live in a place that doesn’t have eggshell walls. This will be helpful

what color is that in the wall makeover? i want to paint my dining room these exacr colors?

They paint color I ended up going with is called Creamy Mushroom by BEHR. Happy painting!

That would be awesome for you guys to get your place! Hopeful this can help you.

We're paining the whole basement/playroom in a month or two. I'm going to do as you suggest and tape swatches to the walls. I wasn't even thinking of the different lighting during the different times of day.. until now.

It really did help me out a ton to use those color cards. I would also really recommend using the paint samples. It made a difference for me. Thanks for your comment!

Can you share the names of the three color swatches pictured above? The color on the bottom looks exactly like what I'm looking for. Thanks!!

Sarah great question!! All of these paint samples are from the Behr paint line. I got them from Home depot. The colors are ( starting from top left going clockwise) Mesa Taupe, Studio Taupe, and Creamy Mushroom. I ended up painting the entire interior of my house Creamy Mushroom and I love it!! It is definitely a good gre-beige.

Good suggestions. I agree that getting the Behr paint sample jars is a must do. I had in my mind a certain color of green I wanted my kitchen. I ended up with 7 different colors of paint & still none of them was “the” color I desired. I took the two colors I liked the best & blended the three colors in different ways until I created “the” color. Love my walls. Did the same thing in my dinning room with 5 paint samples.

Way to go Pam! I totally agree that paint samples make all the difference. I love that you came up with your own color too. Sometimes you have in your head what you want and if the store doesn’t have it you have to make it yourself. I love that!

I LOVE the colors of my walls.

But…..

This has not always been the case.

Have you ever loved a color in store but when you got it home and painted your entire wall or dare I say an entire room and realized that you hated it!!?

I have been there too.

Let me share with you a few tips that I learned, when deciding what is the best color for your space, so that painting an entire wall or room in a color you hate will never happen again.

If you have NO IDEA there is still hope for you, don’t worry!

Keep reading!!

I have gone to my local paint store before and had no idea what color I wanted to paint my walls. I just knew it needed to be changed! In this case what I did was start choosing colors I thought might look good. I at least had an idea of how bright I wanted my wall color to be so I chose colors that were in that range. I literally walked out of there with 20-30 different color cards.

If you are in the same boat as me, my first recommendation would be to go grab a bunch of sample cards, like a lot!!

If you still have absolutely no clue what color to go with, there is a book that I use all the time when figuring out what colors go well together. I not only use it for painting but also for choosing accents for my home or when making printables. It really can be used for so many things.

The book is called Color Index 2 by Jim Krause. This book is sort of geared toward graphic design/ photography/interior design and I love it! It gives good ideas for what colors look great

together.

Now that you have all of your pretty color cards, bring them into the room that you want to paint. Use some painters tape to tape them all up to your wall.

I would recommend using a white background, if possible, to tape the paint sample too. In the picture below I taped a bunch of 8.5×11 pages together to make a big sheet. You could also pick up a poster board.

What I have also done in the past is actually paint primer right onto the wall and then tape my samples directly to the wall. I think a white background really gives you the best idea of how the color will look in the space.

Also I updated the color of this turquoise wall over here!!

I would bet that pretty soon after you get those sample cards up on your wall you will be able to immediately rule out some of them. Lighting plays such a big role in how a color looks. You might like a color in one room and hate it in another.

I usually let these samples sit on my wall for a few days before I make a decision. I know it is so hard to be patient and wait but it will pay off in the end because you will have a color that you absolutely love!

After a few days of looking at my paint samples and narrowing down my choices I will usually decide on 2-3 possible colors.

This next step is probably the most important!

After I have narrowed my decision down to 2-3 I go down to my local Home Depot and purchase my possible paint colors in 8oz sample jars.

This has seriously made all the difference.

I think they run about $2.50-$3.50 per jar. So really the cost is not that much. Especially if you consider having to repaint a wall because you originally painted it a color you hate.

After you pick up your paint samples come back to your room and either paint them on the wall, a white pieces of paper, like I did above, or a poster board. You can even do what I did in the picture below, sheet rock. We were doing some remodeling in our home and I found this extra piece and it worked great.

Ok, you might be asking me, why do I need to go buy paint samples when the color card should do the trick?

I highly recommend purchasing sample paint jars and painting a larger area of sample paint if you can. Sample paint is better because it’s the real deal. The cards get close, but just not the same as the real paint. For me, I was painting the entire interior of my house. I really really wanted to choose a color that I LOVED. I was not going to take any chances. The real deal is the way to go.

My walls are painted and I am glad that I took the time to really choose a color that I liked and that looked good with the lighting. I even added stripes to a wall using this same technique. My next project is our small bathroom!

Let me sum it all up for you!

Original article and pictures take http://www.hawthorneandmain.com/2014/05/love-colors-of-my-walls.html site