Finding Pleasing Colors The process of picking paint colors for your home may seem totally subjective--you simply select the colors you prefer. That is merely partly true. Although it makes sense to begin with the colors you prefer, other elements enter into play. For instance, do the colors you've chosen work well collectively? Do they compliment furnishing, carpeting, and window treatments already in use? Picking paint colors is really part artwork and part science. Let's start with the science part first.
Features of the Color Wheel The color wheel arranges the color spectrum in a circle. It is a good way to see which colors work very well together. It includes primary colors (red, blue, and yellow), secondary colors (green, orange, violet), and tertiary colors (red-blue, blue-red, and so on). 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 mixed to produce a tertiary color--in this circumstance, turquoise.
Now that you've got a color wheel before you, put it to use to help you envision certain color combinations. An analogous scheme includes neighboring colors that share an underlying hue.
Complementary colors lie opposing each other on the color wheel and frequently work well together. Say for example a red and green living room in full strength might be hard to stomach, but consider a rosy pink room with sage green accents. The same complements in differing intensities can make attractive, relaxing combinations. A double complementary color scheme involves an additional group of opposites, such as green-blue and red-orange.
Alternatively, you could opt for a monochromatic scheme that involves using one color in a variety of intensities. This ensures a harmonious color design. When developing a monochromatic scheme, lean toward several tints or several shades, but avoid way too many contrasting values, that is, combinations of tints and shades. This may make your design look uneven.
If you need a more technical palette of three or more colors, go through the triads formed by three equidistant colors, such as red/yellow/blue or green/purple/orange. A split complement comprises three colors- one primary or intermediate and two colors on either part of its opposite side of the wheel. For example, instead of teaming purple with yellow, move the mixture to purple with orange-yellow and yellow-green.
Last but not least, four colors similarly spaced round the wheel, such as yellow/green/purple/red, form a tetrad. If such combinations seem a bit like Technicolor, understand that colors designed for interiors are hardly ever 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 get into these two basic camps:
Harmonious or analogous; plans, derived from nearby colors on the wheel less than halfway around.
Contrasting or complementary; strategies, derived from colors that are directly opposite on the wheel.
Colors for the Interior Don't just choose one color; think in terms of deciding on a color structure. Study your furniture, curtains, window treatments, and carpets and rugs, and be aware which colors might go with them.
Next, take note of 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 do not want to call attention to it. The same is true of other trim, such as windows casings and couch rail.
How about where the walls meet the ceiling? Do you want to install crown molding or various other type of cornice treatment there? Or will you be 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 change with paint makers, but they are important because the sheen of paint impacts the color. A rule of thumb claims that walls usually get flat or eggshell surface finishes whereas ceilings are almost invariably decorated with a flat finish. Trim is normally painted with a semi-gloss or high gloss. These finishes are stronger 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 give you a small scale idea of what the specific colors can look like once applied. You need to do more than take a look at color chips to obtain a true sense of your colors... nonetheless they are a good place to start. In fact, a seasoned sales rep at your neighborhood paint store can help you select color chips in a scheme. If you choose a buttercup yellow for the walls, the sales person can suggest color chips that are usually associated with a scheme that has buttercup yellow as its anchor color.
When you have whittled down your color choices, go through the color chips or swatches in different types of light including day light at different times of your day and in varying degrees of artificial light. Even then, this color chip process is merely to get an idea of paints that you will sample in bigger swaths of color. Very few professional designers pick from chips, even though they could start their color selection from chips. If they do examine chips, they examine them one at a time on a white background.
Color Changing Take into account that large surface areas make any paint color show up darker than the color chip. The amount of variant is usually equal to two shades. In the event that you pick the color chip you desire, step "back" two shades darker for a genuine representation of what the color will look like when dried out. 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 at first. Hang on until it dries.
If you are zeroing in on your final colors, paint a 2 x 3 foot poster board or cloth material with the anchor color and stick it throughout the house so that you can visualize it in different light and near different colored carpeting and rugs and furniture.
Size and Color Colors can affect the way you perceive the size of a room. Warm colors like reds, yellows, and oranges can make a space seem 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 really is. If you really want to make a room seem large choose an old standby such as a shade of white (there are dozens) or a neutral color.
Estimating Room Size As you get closer 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 every one of the measurements together to obtain a total square footage of the surface you must paint. If you are applying two coats which is normal for most paint jobs, you will be painting the area twice.
Sound Quality Painting
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