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How Do You Find the Best Hues for Your Home?
Whether you stick with neutrals, go bold with bright tints, or make a statement with subdued tones, color is a big part of design. It’s important to make choices about your palette with intent since they set the stage for your entire look. Therefore, how do you decide what colors are best for your home?
You don’t need to stress out about picking the right colors. Instead, take it one step at a time and use this easy approach to find the colors that work in your space.
Start With Colors You Love
Don’t use any colors you hate in your home, even if they’re trending. Just because a color is Pantone’s Color of the Year, doesn’t mean it’s a good fit for your house.
Start your color search with your favorites. Look through images of rooms to see which ones catch your eye and which ones make you scowl. Take a peek in your closet. Your wardrobe likely says a lot about the colors you prefer.
Make a list of your top favorite colors and a list of colors you don’t like. Then think about whether you prefer cooler colors, like blues and grays, or warmer colors like yellows, reds, and browns.
Once you have a handle on the hues you love the most, you have a starting point.
Gather Inspiration
Look through design magazines, Pinterest, Instagram, your friend’s houses, and anywhere else you can find design inspiration. Keep your favorite colors in mind when looking at these rooms to see some of your top picks in action.
You should be able to narrow down your list a bit and also determine which neutrals are more your style. For example, do you lean more toward whites and grays, or do you prefer beiges or taupes? Think about your jewelry — do you tend to wear more gold or silver?
Be inspired and get a good feel for the colors you love and how they work with other shades and tones. If you need help deciding which colors work best together or how you want to combine colors, try using a color wheel.
Think About the Space
Even if you adore a particular hue, it may not be the best color for the room you’re designing. For example, if you need an energetic vibe in a space because you’re setting up a home gym, you may not want to use all subdued shades of green or blue. These colors tend to evoke more of a relaxed vibe — hardly what you want if you’re trying to get your heart rate up with an intense workout.
Therefore, think about what you plan to use the space for and how you want the room to make you feel. Look through your top colors and see which ones fit the bill. Certain colors make you feel a specific way.
However, don’t just rely on what a book or article tells you about how a color should make you feel. Look at the various hues and pay attention to the emotions and reactions you have to each one.
Keeping in mind the colors you love, the inspiration you’ve gathered, and how you want to feel in the space, decide on three to five colors for your room. Check out paint chips at the home improvement store to find your top picks.
Test Your Colors
Once you have your three to five favorite choices, get sample jars of paint for each one in a finish close to what you plan to use. Typically, you can buy samples in satin or flat finishes, but check with your local store to see what they offer.
Bring your samples home and paint each one on a large piece of white poster board. Attach the poster board to your wall with painter’s tape. Now you can see how the color looks in the space and move it around easily to see how it changes in different areas.
View the samples in different parts of the room, next to the window, across from it, during the day, and at night. See how the samples look with all the lights on and when you turn them off. Live with your test swatches for a couple of days.
As you decide against one, remove it. Keep doing this until you’re left with your favorite. Then, do the same thing with any other colors you need for the space, like for trim, accents, etc. (Or, paint your trim and doors the same color as your walls if you’re going for a seamless effect.)
Paint and Be Proud
Once you go through the process of finding the perfect colors for your house, you can paint each room in confidence. Repeat the steps for each space in your home, keeping in mind an overall color scheme for your house.
