Why Your Selected Paint Color Will Not Work

We often receive phone calls from frantic homeowners who have selected a paint color that doesn’t suit a room. Consequently, they have to pay to have space repainted because they hate it. Throughout the years, we have compiled a list of mistakes people have made when choosing their paint colors. Have you made one or more of these errors?

1. Your paint color doesn’t appear any place else in the room. Always start with a leading pattern in a rug, piece of artwork, or fabric in the room. Pull out one color that you want as your backdrop to give the room some unity.
2. Your room color doesn’t compliment your flooring, cabinetry, or countertops. Select a color that will go with the undertones in these constants in the room. Is the undertone (underlying color) yellow, red-pink, gray, green, yellow-green, red-orange, red-violet? Place your paint swatch next to a solid hue in the same color family. This should help you see the undertone.
3. You didn’t consider the natural or artificial lighting in the room. A room facing north gets sunlight that has more of a blue tinge to it; an eastern–facing room experiences more of a green cast of sunlight; southern light is usually more yellow-white, and rooms facing west receive more of an orange-tinged light. Eastern and western light changes the most during the day.   When it comes to artificial lighting, designers prefer halogen lighting because it’s most like natural light. Incandescent lighting makes warm colors like yellow, orange, and red appear brighter and cool colors like greens, blue, or violet appear duller. The new fluorescent lighting no longer casts a blue light; colors in a room with this lighting appear in their natural hues. LED lights can change a color’s boldness or hue altogether.
4. You didn’t consider adjoining rooms. Make sure that colors in your home coordinate. Decide what your overall color scheme in your home will be and select colors accordingly. Take a look at a color wheel to see harmonious (side-by-side) and complementery (opposite) colors.
5. You chose contrasting colors for a small room which will make the room appear smaller. Remember dark colors don’t make a room small; having too much difference in the room colors causes the eye to stop.  Every time the eye stops, it visualizes a smaller space.
6. The best way to test whether your interior paint color will work in a room is to paint the color on a large piece of poster board.  If you are using two coats on the wall, use two coats for your sample. Then cut the poster board into four pieces and place one piece on each wall of the room.  Watch it throughout the day and evening when you have lights on to see how it looks with both natural and artificial light.

If you don’t feel confident in selecting your own paint colors, contact us at 904.625.2214 so you don’t make an expensive mistake. Let us pick the right hue for you!

Interiors Revitalized is a full-service home staging, model home merchandising, and interior design firm located in Jacksonville Florida.  In addition to Jacksonville, we serve the St. Johns, St. Augustine, Orange Park, Fleming Island, and Fernandina Beach areas. Contact us today at 904.625.2214 to discuss your home staging or interior design project.  We’ll make that first offer your best offer!

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Contact us today at 904.625.2214 to realize your dream room.