Choosing Colors The process of picking paint colors for your home may appear totally subjective--you simply pick the colors you prefer. That is merely partly true. Although it makes sense to start with the colors you prefer, other elements come into play. For instance, do the colors you've chosen work well alongside one another? Do they work with furnishing, carpeting, and window treatments already in place? Picking paint colors is really part art and part science. Let's start with the science part first.
Working with the Color Wheel The color wheel arranges the color spectrum in a circle. It is a good way to see which colors work well together. It includes primary colors (red, blue, and yellow), secondary colors (green, orange, violet), and tertiary colors (red-blue, blue-red, etc). Secondary colors are made by mixing two primaries together, such as blue and yellow to make green. A primary color such as blue and a secondary color such as green can be mixed to make a tertiary color--in this circumstance, turquoise.
Now that you've got a color wheel before you, make use of it to help you envision certain color combinations. An analogous scheme entails neighboring colors that share an underlying hue.
Complementary colors lie complete opposite each other on the color wheel and often work well together. Say for example a red and green living room in full strength might be hard to stomach, but look at a rosy pink room with sage green accents. Similar complements in differing intensities can make attractive, comforting combinations. A double complementary color plan involves an additional set of opposites, such as green-blue and red-orange.
Alternatively, you may go with a monochromatic scheme that involves using one color in a variety of intensities. This ensures a harmonious color design. When creating a monochromatic plan, lean toward several tints or several shades, but avoid way too many contrasting values, that is, combinations of tints and shades. This may make your plan look uneven.
If you want a more complex palette of three or even more colors, go through the triads formed by three equidistant colors, such as red/yellow/blue or green/purple/orange. A split complement is composed of three colors- one primary or intermediate and two colors on either side of its opposite side of the wheel. For example, instead of teaming purple with yellow, transfer the mix to purple with orange-yellow and yellow-green.
Finally, four colors equally spaced round the wheel, such as yellow/green/purple/red, form a tetrad. If such combinations sound a little like Technicolor, remember that colors designed for interiors are seldom undiluted. Thus yellow might be cream; blue-purple, a dark eggplant; and orange-red, a muted terra-cotta or whisper-pale peach. With less jargon, the color combinations get into both of these basic camps:
Harmonious or analogous; strategies, derived from nearby colors on the wheel less than halfway around.
Contrasting or complementary; techniques, derived from colors that are directly opposite on the wheel.
Colors for the Interior Don't just choose one color; think in terms of deciding on a color scheme. Review your furniture, curtains, window treatments, and rugs, and take note of which colors might go with them.
Next, take note of how many colors you think you might be using. Will the baseboards be considered a different color than the walls? They usually are unless the trim is in bad shape and you don't want to call attention to it. The same will additionally apply to other trim, such as window casings and couch rail.
How about where the walls meet the ceiling? Will you install crown molding or various other type of cornice treatment there? Or are you considering painting the walls and demarcating the ceiling and wall junction with a color change?
In addition to paint colors, you will also need to determine the level of finish or sheen the paint will have. The options range from the most shiny (high gloss and semi-gloss) to the dullest (eggshell and flat). These designations differ with paint manufacturers, but they are important because the sheen of paint affects the color. A rule of thumb says that walls usually get flat or eggshell surface finishes whereas ceilings are almost invariably painted with a flat finish. Trim is normally decorated with a semi-gloss or high gloss. These surface finishes are more durable and simpler to clean than duller coatings.
Think in terms of groups of colors.
Paint manufacturers group like colors together like below:
Interior Wall Colors All paint stores can offer color chips of the paints they sell. Color chips will give you a small scale idea of what the actual colors will look like once applied. You need to do more than take a look at color chips to obtain a true sense of your colors... nonetheless they are a good place to start. Actually, a seasoned sales person at your local paint store can help you select color chips in a scheme. In the event that you choose a buttercup yellow for the walls, the sales rep can suggest color chips that are usually associated with a scheme that has buttercup yellow as its anchor color.
When you have whittled down your color options, look at the color chips or swatches in various types of light including natural light at differing times of the day and in varying degrees of artificial light. Even then, this color chip process is just to get a concept of paints that you'll sample in greater swaths of color. Very few professional designers pick from chips, even though they could start their color selection from chips. If indeed they do examine chips, they examine them individually on a white background.
Changes in Color Take into account that large surface areas make any paint color look darker than the color chip. The amount of variance is usually up to two shades. If you pick the color chip you desire, step "back" two shades darker for a true representation of what the color will look like when dried out. Also, paint always looks darker once it dries. So, when you finally apply the paint, don't panic if the color doesn't look right at first. Hang on until it dries.
If you are zeroing in on your final colors, paint a 2 x 3 ft. poster board or cloth with the anchor color and place it around the house to enable you to see it in various light and near different colored carpets and rugs and furniture.
Color and Space Colors can affect the way you perceive the size of a room. Warm colors like reds, yellows, and oranges will make a space seem smaller because they can provide a cozy feeling to the area. The so called cool colors like blues and greens appear to recede from you, making an area appear larger than it truly is. If you actually want to make an area seem large opt for an old standby like a shade of white (there are dozens) or a neutral color.
Estimating Area Size While you get closer to buying paint, determine the square footage of the area you will paint. Multiply the length of each wall by the width. Subtract the area occupied by the entrance doors, windows, and other openings. Add every one of the measurements together to get a total square footage of the surface you must paint. If you are applying two coats which is normal for some paint jobs, you'll be painting the area twice.
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