Tips and Tricks - The Best Way to Choose Interior Paint Colors

Finding the right color can be tricky, and for reasons that aren’t quite obvious at first. Your trip to the paint store will be much easier if you keep a few things in mind:

Most paint chips aren’t made from paint. Shocking, isn’t it? With the exception of C2 Paint, most national brands have their chips printed with ink – and ink is a transparent medium while paint is an opaque one, and light interacts differently with these two mediums. Therefore it is almost impossible to replicate the color on the sample chip to the color that comes from the can. If you have ever wondered why the color on the chip didn’t match the color on the wall, now you know.

Color chips have another disadvantage – they are small. When you look at the size of even a single wall, you quickly realize that a paint chip is too small to accurately give you an impression of how the color will play in a full-scale setting. If you understand that color chips are very handy tools to take you to the next step, they can be very useful. Color chips provide a very quick method for winnowing out the obviously wrong colors and finding those three or four colors that might work. Your next step is to sample the actual color.

Before we roll on some color, let’s look at one more issue: Lighting. If you are trying to make a color choice while standing in a busy paint store or staring at some samples on a computer screen, you are at another disadvantage because you are not looking at your color under the correct lighting conditions.

Preferably, you want to see what happens to your paint color in a series of lighting situations – morning, noon and evening. Each of these different times of day affects the way the color reads, and you want to make sure you like it at all times. Sometimes a color will ‘mud out’ at night (we can spend a lot of time discussing tinting recipes and why this happens… but later), or intensify to the point of looking neon, or wash out and look almost white when you thought it would be a soft taupe, or you find that charming coffeehouse color looks heavy and sluggish. Color does not always do what you expect it to. And if you live in a grove of trees or near the water, testing becomes imperative.

Ideally, you want to try your color with the other design elements that are going into the space like sofas, rugs, art, etc… C2’s Ultimate Paint Chip, which is a poster-sized chip made from real paint, is one option if you aren’t ready to get paint on the walls, or you can try a 16 oz. Sampler or Test Quart of paint (depending upon the brand you are using). Paint AT LEAST an 18’ x 24’ patch on the wall. More if you can. Apply the color on the darkest wall, the lightest (usually opposite a window), and in a corner. This allows you to see your color in all room and lighting situations.

Another major benefit of testing your color - it keeps those unfortunate color mistakes from becoming landfill. And we can all feel good about that!

Color Inspiration

Inspiration for color and color combinations happens in the most unusual places sometimes.

This weekend I had to haul myself across the country to Tampa, FL for two nights. It's not a trip I recommend for the faint-of-heart - especially considering that those 7am business breakfasts really happen at 4am Seattle-time! Ouch.

However, as I was traveling home I found some really beautiful uses of color. Specifically, when I was going to Terminal E at the Tampa airport, I noticed a large WPA mural (originally painted in the 1930's by artist George Snow Hill. They were restored decades later by the artist himself) over the security line. The subject of the mural was the first flight landing in Tampa - but it was the use of color that really stood out.

The colors were all from a palette that was both colorful and muted at the same time. There were reds, blues, browns, golds and such, but none of the colors were "pure" or "clear". It created a harmony between all the colors and let the artist use a large variety of color without it looking like a mish-mash.

The same skills can be applied when using color in a home. This is how some people are very successful in having different colored rooms that all seem to flow together harmoniously. If the colors were "acid" or "bright", they would stick out like a sore thumb and not feel very good to live with.

My other experience happened on the airplane. The movie "Evening" was the selection on the way home. Starring Claire Danes, Vanessa Redgrave, Meryl Streep, Mamie Gummer, Toni Colette and Natasha Richardson (whew! what a cast!).

I chose not to watch the movie (too tired for an emotional film), but I ended up watching the colors used in the different scenes. They skillfully used color to help define the different times and eras that took place in the film.

I got sucked into looking at the color combinations, without the sound. It was pretty cool to watch a movie without being involved in the story. You certainly notice different things.

The scene where Meryl Streep's character visits the dying Vanessa Redgrave character is all done with white. White suit, white pearls, white sheets, white nightgown, white light and white hair. In unskilled hands this would have been the most boring, washed-out scene imaginable. But every white was different and again, there was no "pure" white - it was all rich and warm. Tough to pull off, but very pretty.

I love these greens. I love the whitewall tires that aren't icy white. I love the intense light on the actors from the sun. A feast for the eyes.

Color Perception

We had a customer come in to pick up a color chip from a color consultation she had earlier. She was looking for the color "Chutney" by C2 Paint. When she pulled it out of the rack, we could see that she was a bit surprised at how intense the color appeared.

Luckily we have a small wall painted that color right in the showroom - what a difference! The color on the chip looked a lot stronger than when applied on the wall. However, when you compare the little chip to the wall, they match.

This is a good reminder about why we often stress the importance of trying a new color out in sample form before making a final decision. If she hadn't seen the color in a larger example she probably wouldn't have felt the "Chutney" was the right color after all. Seeing a life-sized sample allows the eye to read the color itself, and not the contrast of the color against it's surroundings. Color is all about relationships, one color to the other...

How to Choose an Exterior Paint Color

As I was driving to work this morning, I couldn't help but notice a trail of white paint drizzled on the road, the trail was at least 6 blocks long. Apparently some poor soul's paint can wasn't sealed properly, and it was slowly pouring out of the vehicle unbeknown to the driver. My burning question... Why white paint?

Luckily, the trail was not leading from our parking lot!

If you are planning on repainting the exterior this year, you are probably interested in finding the perfect color scheme for your house. Like a good haircut making you feel like a million bucks, the right exterior colors can make all the difference in how you feel about your house.

When you are looking a colors for the outside, remember they will look vastly different than when standing at the paint rack. If you drive by Daly's during the nicer months, you will always see us hauling people outside to look at color schemes. This is because color looses a lot of it's intensity outside versus inside and we want to see how the color reads in a more accurate manner.

A good rule of thumb is to push yourself a bit and find a color that is deeper/darker on the chip than you want it to look on the house. Since the color is reflecting off into the sky (as opposed to bouncing off a wall for interior colors, thereby increasing the way the color reads) the color looses a lot of definition.

Also, don't forget the roof!

Have you ever driven around different neighborhoods looking at house colors and realized that in many instances, the roof is sticking out like a sore thumb? It's probably because they forgot to take the roof colors into consideration when creating their color scheme. You don't have to make this same mistake.

If your house is surrounded by vast lawns or dense thickets of trees, then you will be getting a lot of reflected green light thrown onto your house, and this will affect how your colors will read. If you don't like the green effect, choose colors with a warm, reddish/orangy cast. Red and green are opposite each other on the color wheel, and will tend to cancel each other out. This doesn't mean you need to paint everything barn red, but just make the "flavor" of the color warm.

In some instances, you may even need to consider the colors schemes of your neighbors homes. If your houses are close together, they may be reflecting upon you. For instance, can you imagine two sage-green houses next to each other, especially if the greens weren't compatible with each other? It might make you feel more sick than serene.

Colors are all about relationships. If you are looking for a body color and two trim colors, remember that the trim colors will influence how sell the body color will read.

Here's a good example of what I mean: My cute neighbors who live across the street choose a body color they thought was a soft sage green. In reality, they realized it was seriously minty when the paint went up. Ack! The beigy trim color they had planned to use with the soft green was going to make the green look sickly (and who wants to spend all this money paying someone to paint the house and then feel heartsick over the colors?). So we rescued the minty green by adding crisp white trim with rich navy accents. The deep navy make the mint green look less intense, and the crisp white gave the whole look a clean cottage feel. Whew. Crisis averted.

They may have avoided some panicky feelings if they had tested their colors out first. I like our new 16 oz samplers, this is enough paint to test the color out on ALL sides of the house. Or I encourage people to use C2's Ultimate Paint Chips. These couldn't be any easier, they are poster-sized chips of real paint. No muss, no fuss. If you are like me, and tend to make colors 25% darker than the chip, or 50% lighter - the Sampler Pots (those 16 oz paint pots) are the next best thing to Fran's Gray Sea Salt Caramels. Any color I want, even custom colors, in a sample pot.

I have had all sorts of chips hanging off the side of my house all winter long, and I think I FINALLY have decided my new color! And it's not one I was even considering before: C2 Paint's "Element" - but at least 25% darker - of course!