Today I’m back with the second edition of Rookie Reno Lessons (see the lessons we learned about prepping subfloor for flooring install here). When we bought our home almost 3 years ago we were renovation newbies. Over the course of 3 years we have tackled many projects in our home and with each project comes a few new lessons learned, things we would have done differently, and things we wish we would have known ahead of time.
This post is all about selecting paint colors. Have you ever struggled picking out paint colors or picked a color, painted, and then realized you don’t like how the color looks in the room? I have! I am far from an expert at selecting paint colors, but I have learned a lot of lessons from picking the wrong paint colors (or at least the wrong colors for what we wanted) and wanted to share a few tips and tricks I have learned to make selecting a paint color a little bit easier.
Where I have Gone Wrong in the Past
I’ll start out by sharing where I have gone wrong in the past.
PICKING COLORS BASED ON HOW THEY LOOK IN OTHER PEOPLE’S HOUSES
This should be common sense, and though I knew not to pick paint colors based on how they look in other people’s houses or how they look in pictures, I still found myself falling into that trap. It is so easy to go to someone’s house or see a pretty picture and fall in love with a paint color, but this doesn’t consider how it will look in YOUR home with your furniture and décor, flooring, and lighting. I did this in my dining room when I tried painting our dining room dark green and even wrote a blog post about it. I truly love that paint color (just not in our dining room) and even used it on the closest doors in our office renovation, but I still want to use it on a wall someday, I just need to find the right place.
ONLY PAINTING A SAMPLE ON ONE WALL
When you only paint a sample on one wall you miss out on seeing how the paint reflects in different lights and from different angles.
NOT CONSIDERING UNDERTONES AND DIRECTION OF NATURAL LIGHT
Undertones and the direction the room faces may be my biggest past fails in picking paint colors. For example, last year I painted our upstairs hallway in Repose Gray by Sherwin Williams. Repose Gray is a pretty paint color, but I now know it’s not the right color for our upstairs hallway because it gets very minimal natural light and tends to lean cooler on its own already. This color has deep purple and brown undertones. I even sampled this color on multiple walls and thought I liked it, but once the color was up on all the walls all I could see was light purple (that is the cool coming out of the color), instead of a warmer gray. Our hallway is still this color, and I by no means think it looks bad, but all I can see is light purple so I do have plans to paint it again, hopefully someday soon.
Our dining room and den were originally painted light gray, different colors, but both colors ended up reading very cool in each of the rooms because they both face north and were heavily shaded by trees. I liked the colors we painted the dining room and the den and do not think they looked bad, but if we are going with gray we prefer grays that lean a little warmer and less cool, so we ended up repainting both rooms totally different colors! I already mentioned the dining room, but you can read about the den here. The den is now a deep blue-green. I think the dark color works well in the north facing room as it embraces the cooler tones and the moody factor the room already had.
Selecting a paint color you do not like is not the end of the world by any means, but I believe creating a home that you love really does have an impact on your happiness. If you painted a room a color (or it was already a color) and you don’t really like it I would suggest changing it if you can, especially if it’s a room you are in or see every day! I promise when you walk into that room you will think of other, hopefully more positive things, rather than internally grumbling about how the paint color irks you… or is it just me?
TIPS FOR SELECTING PAINT COLORS
Now that I’ve shared a few of my paint color select mistakes I’ll let you in on a few tricks and the process I now use when selecting paint colors.
1 | SELECT A GENERAL COLOR YOU WANT AND BRING LOTS OF SAMPLES HOME
Select a general color you want (i.e. light gray) and pull a lot of paint chips that you think could work and bring them home – learn from my mistake, don’t do this in the store. The lighting in the store is likely so much different that it is in your house.
2 | TAKE INTO ACOUNT THE DIRECTION THE ROOM YOU ARE PAINTING FACES
Paint colors in north facing rooms tend to take on a gray-ish/blue-ish tint purely due to the lack of natural light. Whites tend to look washed out in a north facing room as well, but this is highly dependent on how much light your room gets. If your north facing room has tons of light you may not have this issue. For example, our north facing dining room window looks out onto our covered porch and we have a lot of trees in our front yard so our dining room naturally has a much more cool light, where our extra bedroom upstairs directly above the dining room has tons of natural light and usually has a more warm feeling natural light, despite the fact that it faces north. South facing rooms can have this same issue in the morning, but in the afternoons they will likely feel warmer. East and west facing rooms have more flexibility and are adaptable to both warm and cool colors in my opinion.
3 | WEED OUT COLORS THAT ARE TOO WARM OR TOO COOL
Line all the paint chips up and start weeding out colors that are too warm (brown/red) and too cool (blue/green) based on the desired feel you want. If you are having a hard time telling use the darkest paint color of the paint chip as a guide, this is generally show you which direction a color will lean.
4 | SAMPLE A FEW COLORS ON EACH WALL
Once you narrow it down to a few colors you like I would suggest painting a small sample of each on each wall in the room. The light will reflect differently off each wall and it really can make the way you see a paint color change. Also, look at the samples you paint in the morning, midday, and in the evening. They will look different each time of day!
5 | PICK THE COLOR THAT FEELS THE BEST
After all the hemming and hawing and feeling like all the paint colors look the same pick the one that feels best to you in the space!
I can’t guarantee that by following these tips you will 100% love any paint color you choose, but I think they will help to guide you find a color that you love! If you are starting a painting project be sure to check out the post about my favorite painting tools here!
