3 Tips for Picking the Perfect Paint Color

Once I started painting I realized that walls are like pringles… you can’t paint just one! I learned everything I could about painting the inside of your home and then I started working at the local paint store! Now I spend my days mixing paint and answering questions… and I’m here to share a little bit of that knowledge with you… starting with tips for picking the perfect paint color.

One of the very first steps to painting a room is picking the perfect color… but with so many color options how do we know where to start?

Looking for a bunch of posts on painting? I’ve got you covered!
Click here to see all of my helpful paint posts in one place!

BONUS! Need a little help picking a color? Sign up for my FREE 6-day e-course to help you find your perfect shade!

Score!

SW Sea Salt is a dreamy shade of sea foam but it looks completely different depending on the time of day… I’ve had customers bring in colors of a blue wall and say “this Sea Salt wall looks nothing like the color chip… it looks baby blue!”. Other customers have stated “I loved Sea Salt on the color chip but it looks light gray in my kitchen!”

That’s the charm of Sea Salt… depending on your lighting it can range in tones from the traditional sea foam all the way through the gray spectrum!

The same can be said of yellows, beiges or tans… a customer came in for a bit of touch up paint claiming he had light beige walls. When we looked through the system and found his original paint color it was SW Harvest Gold! This rich gold color looks light beige in his home… and even though he was unsure he bought a quart and took it home to touch up.

He came back the next week to say that Harvest Gold was absolutely the right color… it touched up perfectly!

I find the shift in color fascinating, our master bedroom is Silvermist which can read as sea foam, blue or gray depending on the time of day and amount of lights on in the house! It goes perfectly with our bedding and I love the amount of contrast it brings to the space.

So with all of these differences in color how do I know which color to pick… and that how it will look in my home?

Here’s a few tips to make picking the perfect color a breeze… no matter what lighting you have!

The only way to be absolutely sure what a color will look like in different lighting is to observe it firsthand!

Buy a sample and take it home! See how it looks in the morning, afternoon and evening. The sun’s angle and direction combined with your interior lighting can dramatically change what each color looks like. Paint several swatches on your wall and see which one you love in person.

Colors appear truest in the middle of the day under indirect natural sunlight.

While you want to see how each color looks at every point of the day (you’ll be living with them 24/7 after all!) keep in mind that different amount of sunlight makes a direct impact on your color. So to get a perfect impression of your colors take a peek around lunch time with the lights turned off and the windows open wide. You’ll get a true sense of the color so that you can match accessories and other décor pieces accordingly.

Check your artificial lighting.

If you love a color on the swatch but it looks a little off on the wall try changing your light bulbs. Incandescent bulbs cast a warm orange glow while Fluorescent bulbs provide a cool blue light. LED light is whiter and more neutral and therefore best equipped to give you truer colors.

Of course after so many years of being the paint lady has taught me a trick or two… and instead of keeping it all to myself I’m sharing it with you in a little eBook called Inside the Paint Can: Beginner Tips and Tricks for Interior Painting!

Painting your home can be a daunting task but it doesn’t have to be. So if you’re ready to make painting a little less confusing you’ll love all 10 chapters of this book… it’s jam packed with the answers to all kinds of fun painting questions!

Of course, if you have even more questions you can always email me at Betsy {at} Happilyeverafteretc {dot} com and I’d love to help!