Colors for Your Home The process of picking paint colors for your home may seem to be totally subjective--you simply pick the colors you like. That is only partly true. While it makes sense to start with the colors you prefer, other elements come into play. For instance, do the colors you've preferred work well together? Do they work with furnishing, carpeting, and draperies already in place? Picking paint colors is part artwork and part science. Let's start with the science part first.
Employing the Color Wheel The color wheel arranges the color spectrum in a circle. It is a sensible 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 created 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 merged to make a tertiary color--in this circumstance, turquoise.
Now that there is a color wheel before you, make use of it to help you envision certain color combinations. An analogous plan requires neighboring colors that share an underlying hue.
Complementary colors lie opposing one another on the color wheel and often work well in concert. For instance a red and green living room in full intensity might be hard to stomach, but look at a rosy pink room with sage green accents. Similar complements in varying intensities can make attractive, calming combinations. A dual complementary color scheme involves yet another group of opposites, such as green-blue and red-orange.
Alternatively, you might go with a monochromatic scheme that involves using one color in a number of intensities. This ensures a harmonious color plan. When creating a monochromatic scheme, lean toward several tints or several shades, but avoid too many contrasting values, that is, combinations of tints and shades. This can make your design look uneven.
If you need a more technical 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 part of its complete opposite side of the wheel. For example, instead of teaming purple with yellow, switch the mixture to purple with orange-yellow and yellow-green.
Finally, four colors similarly spaced around the wheel, such as yellow/green/purple/red, form a tetrad. If such combinations seem a little like Technicolor, understand that colors designed for interiors are rarely undiluted. Thus yellowish 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 fall into these two basic camps:
Harmonious or analogous; strategies, derived from nearby colors on the wheel less than halfway around.
Contrasting or complementary; schemes, derived from colors that are directly opposite on the wheel.
Interior Complementary Colors Don't just choose one color; think in terms of deciding on a color plan. Study your furniture, curtains, window treatments, and floor coverings, and take note which colors might go with them.
Next, take notice of just how many colors you think you might be using. Will the baseboards be 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 home window casings and seat rail.
How about where the walls meet the ceiling? Will you install crown molding or some 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'll 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 vary with paint makers, but they are essential because the sheen of paint influences the color. A guideline claims that walls usually get flat or eggshell finishes whereas ceilings are almost invariably painted with a flat finish. Trim is normally painted with a semi-gloss or high gloss. These finishes are more durable and easier to clean than duller coatings.
Think in terms of groups of colors.
Paint manufacturers group like colors together like below:
Interior Walls All paint stores provide color chips of the paints they sell. Color chips will provide you with a small scale idea of what the colors can look like once applied. You will need to do more than look at color chips to get a true sense of your colors... but they are a good place to start. Actually, a seasoned sales person at your neighborhood 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 design that has buttercup yellow as its anchor color.
When you have whittled down your color options, look at the color chips or swatches in several types of light including natural light at different times of the day and in varying degrees of artificial light. Even then, this color chip process is just to get an idea of paints that you will sample in greater swaths of color. Very few professional designers select from chips, even though they could start their color selection from chips. If they do examine chips, they examine them individually on a white background.
Changes in Color Keep in mind that large surface areas make any paint color look darker than the color chip. The degree of variation is usually equal to two shades. If you select the color chip you desire, step "back" two shades darker for a genuine representation of what the color will look like when dry. Also, paint always appears darker once it dries. So, when you finally apply the paint, don't panic if the color doesn't look right initially. Wait around until it dries.
If you are zeroing in on your final colors, paint a 2 x 3 foot poster board or fabric with the anchor color and place it around the house to be able to view it in different light and near different colored carpeting and rugs and furniture.
Color and Space Colors can affect how you perceive the size of an area. Warm colors like reds, yellows, and oranges will make a space appear smaller because they provide a cozy feeling to the space. The so called cool colors like blues and greens may actually recede from you, making a room appear bigger than it truly is. If you actually want to make an area seem large select a vintage standby like a shade of white (there are dozens) or a neutral color.
Sizing the Room As you get nearer to buying paint, determine the square footage of the room you will paint. Multiply the length of each wall by the width. Subtract the area occupied by the doorways, house windows, and other openings. Add all the measurements together to get a total square footage of the area you must paint. If you are applying two layers which is normal for most paint jobs, you'll be painting the area twice.
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