How to COMBINE COLORS in Your Home
Today, let’s talk about How to COMBINE COLORS in Your Home. Here are my 5 BEST TIPS to make this job easy. I’ll also share with you some things you probably don’t know about paint color and what you should consider when choosing your palette.
MY 5 BEST TIPS
PRO TIP #1 Use only 3 colors and vary the shade or tint if you’d like more than the original 3.
PRO TIP #2 Carry one color from a room to the adjacent room to lend cohesiveness.
PRO TIP #3 Use a light-colored ceiling to heighten a room’s appearance.
PRO TIP #4 Use the same color on the walls and ceiling for a seamless transition.
PRO TIP #5 Pull your scheme from things you love like a fabric, wallcovering, or a rug.
Now, there are a couple of other things you’ll want to know about choosing your color scheme.
Let’s look at what happens when you compare paint swatches together. I’ll use gray as my example because I think this is a color that confuses people a lot of the time. It’s not until you place your swatches side by side that you start to see how they compare. This is a good practice when you’re not sure. Think about black and navy in your closet. You may not see the color until you place them side by side, right?
The next thing I’d like to share with you is something called “spontaneous color”.
“Spontaneous Color” is the result of one color casting its hue onto another. The two colors will mix. For instance, if you are trying to sample a new color—let’s say it's blue—in a room that is already painted a strong yellow, the resulting test patch is going to look greener than its actual blue hue. The yellow surrounding the patch will “cast” color onto it and mix with it and your eye will read the color incorrectly.
You can see by these two room photos that the wall color is casting itself onto all the furniture, can’t you? The same thing will happen to the color you want to test.
The way to get around this is to ensure that no other color can influence the one you are trying to test. Use a white trifold (remember the science fair?) foam core board to block all other colors.
In an extreme case, you may need to prime the room white first if the existing color is just too strong. You may need to prime anyway as it’s hard to get good coverage over a strong color. And primer is less expensive than a finish coat anyway.
Now, let’s talk about How to Sample Paint Color
Paint can be very tricky! I always recommend that before painting an entire room, test your paint color on a few pieces of poster board or scraps of drywall. Make sure to paint at least two coats of your color on the sample boards for good coverage and post the boards on different walls within the room.
It is important to use the intended lighting to get a true test of the color. In other words, if you plan to use incandescent light bulbs (lamps), place the color boards near that light source. This will give you a more realistic idea of what your walls will look like. The same color under fluorescent lighting or natural daylight can look like an entirely different color!
Also, most paint companies have sample "pots" which are small quantities of their most popular colors, and these are for testing purposes.
Just be aware that you may choose to use a different sheen than what's in the sample pot. A flat will look darker than an eggshell because the light will reflect off the eggshell more than the flat.
Or a smooth paper that you're using to test may not be the same texture as your wall so the wall will absorb more and reflect less due to the "nooks and crannies" of the texture.
NOW…live with these boards for a couple of days to see how the color looks in different lighting. You may not get the result you want the first time you test a paint color. But by testing, you will be able to gauge whether to go lighter, darker, warmer, or cooler from that point. We call that "tweaking". A very technical term. =0)
Try not to paint yourself into a corner! By this I mean, plan as much of your color scheme, as possible. If you can see one room from another, make sure the two color schemes harmonize.
A good rule of thumb is to take at least one of the colors from one room's scheme and use it in the color scheme for the adjacent room(s) as I’ve outlined in the first 5 tips above.
Want more tips on creating your own color scheme? Click here to get your copy of my e-Guide here.
