Getting Started and Choosing a Color

Many people consider a paint job for their home when they are looking to spruce up a room or when they are looking to redecorate an entire interior or exterior.

Often, the arrival of the a family member will cause people to repaint their home.  Especially if a new child is coming or if an older child is returning from school.  Many times, a small project that starts with painting just one room will turn into a larger project, where several rooms are repainted.  Choosing the correct color of paint, along with the correct color of furniture and floor coverings can make a large improvement to the appearance of your home.

The first thing people consider is what color to paint.  Do you want to go with a dark color that gives a warm feeling and a more subdued mood or will you use something bright that makes the room look larger?  Often the first step includes going to paint store and choosing paint chips.  Once you have identified several possible colors it is best to bring these chips home so you can view the colors in the lighting in each individual room.  A paint store often will supply small samples of each color so you can even put a swatch on the wall to see how that color will look.  When looking at paint chips or paint swatches painted on a wall is important to realize that the sheen off the paint will make a difference in how the paint looks.  If possible make sure your paint chip or your paint sample have the correct sheen that you plan on painting on the wall.  For more information on different paint sheens please see our sheen help page.

Some other helpful tools when choosing paint color can be a color deck and a color wheel.  A color deck is a complete set of paint chips from any particular paint manufacturer.  Often times these chips are organized by similar colors and or by complementary colors, this can help when choosing just the right color for your rooms.  A color wheel is a universal tool, which shows complementary and contrasting colors and is often used by interior designers to put together color palettes for a room.  A paint store will often have a spare color decks and color wheels that you can borrow.  You can also find color decks and color wheels on the websites of many major paint manufacturers like Benjamin Moore, Duron or Sherwin-Williams.

Once you feel you have the correct colors identified.  It's time to start painting.