Choosing Paint Colours

[Julie-Ann]

A great place to start when selecting a colour scheme is to let existing elements in the room, like cushions or art, give you ideas.
When choosing a paint colour consider the light in your room. A sunny room looks great with cool colours like blues, and greens. Whereas a cold, dark room will benefit from warm colours like yellow, orange and red.
Before deciding on a paint colour buy a sample pot and paint an A3 piece of white card with 2 coats from your sample pot. Place the paper on the wall to be painted and view it at different times of the day. Not only will the sun’s position make a difference but so will your lighting. Different bulbs can change the paint colour considerably. If you don’t like the paint colour at night under your lights consider if you can change the bulbs or the light fixture. The furnishings surrounding the area to be painted will also affect the colour, so try to remove any coloured items that will not be in your new room.
If you are not sure of what colours to use together you can use a colour wheel. Below are some websites with colour wheels and how to use them. Another tip is to use colours on the same page in a paint fan. Ask your paint shop to show you a colour you have chosen on the paint fan. You can then use colours on the same page that are either lighter or darker with your original colour choice.
As a guide use 60 percent of a dominate colour, 30 percent of a secondary colour, and 10 percent of an accent colour, usually this 10 percent is used in the accessories.
Remember it is only paint and it isn’t expensive to replace:)
– be adventurous.

http://www.colormatters.com/colortheory.html

http://www.tigercolor.com/color-lab/color-theory/color-theory-intro.htm

[Pink Rosé]

In our previous home once renovations were completed we enlisted the help of a colour advisor from a paint shop which I found very helpful. Her advice like yours was to select something within each room which you loved and to use that item to give you guidance. To give you an example, for me the items were a picture in our lounge room, a table runner in the dining area and our sofa in our family room. In the end the results were fabulous and I loved living with the colours. We didn't end up using the expensive paint brand that the woman's company sold however is gave us the direction we needed and the results were the same. Hope this helps someone out there to gain the success we once achieved. I'm going to do the same with my new home!

[Julie-Ann]

Great tip Pink Rose.
One of the other benefits of using a colour consultant from a paint company is that they have A4 size samples of all their paint colours, & even different strengths of the paint colours.
You can get a much better feel of how a colour will look from an A4 size sheet.

[anie_b]

Yes, its good to try the samples before buying the suitable paint colors.