Ever Wonder How the Professionals Pick Designer Color Combinations?

One of the most exciting things about buying a house is all of the personal touches you get to put into it. Even if you’re just doing renovations, painting your walls is the perfect way to bring your personality into the room. The right paint color can take a room from totally drab to totally fab. But, how do they do it? You know, pick those color combinations that make your guests ooh and aww and the beauty of design? Follow these eight steps to ensure you pick the perfect color to bring your rooms to life, just like a designer!

Vertically Decorate From Dark To Light:

The idea is to use the darkest colors on your floors, more medium neutral colors for your walls leaving the lightest colors for your ceiling. By choosing medium tones for your walls you create a more spacious, airy room.

Paint What You Know:

Subconsciously you’re drawn to colors you’re already surrounded in. Try looking at colors in art you hang, rugs you have anything like that. Painting walls with colors found in accessories can really tie the room together.

Feel The Mood:

Depending on what room you’re painting depends on what color you should choose. Bedrooms are for relaxing so you should choose more soothing colors; such as blue, light purples, greens. Whereas sitting rooms are meant to be more lively, so try a light yellow or get really bold here.

It’s All About The Lighting:

Rooms with lots of natural lighting shows the most color. Rooms with fluorescent lightings tend to cast a slight blue tone. Kitchens for example could be painted a nice light blue and sunrooms a bright green.

Know Your Colors:

Know that just because one shade of blue doesn’t work does not mean another wouldn’t either. Colors come in all types of shades and values. Sometimes a color is too dark in value and lightening it up a tad could be the perfect fix.

Don’t Be Afraid To Test:

Some colors can seem very daunting in the store. Taking a sample can home to test on a poster board to be hung on the wall, or even a small portion of a wall to see what the true color is; you might surprise yourself! Also consider the time of day and amount of light coming in at that time, it may change!

Walk Away:

Walk out of one room and into the next. What color could you imagine flowing nicely? Colors like blues, reds and greens flow nicely with a more neutral color in the next room, such as whites and tans.

Use The Color Wheel:

By looking at the color wheel you can see which colors compliment each other, while seeing which ones contrast. Colors like blues and greens go well together, while colors like orange or purple contrast each other. Colors opposite each other on the color wheel make the boldest statements.

Design really does come down to your own personal preference. Sherwin Williams has an amazing gallery of colors by collection as well as a matching service and visualizer tool so you can snap a pic of your room and play with colors by the touch of a button. Check it out! When you’re ready to paint give the professionals at Polson Painting a call!