Picking a Color Scheme for Your Home

If you’ve ever looked at paint chips at the local hardware store, you may have felt overwhelmed by the myriad of colors that are available. Or maybe you thought a nice blue would work, but when faced with dozens of varying degrees of blue you just weren’t certain which to choose. Here are some tips that might help.

Start by choosing three colors from an item you have in your home. Look at throw pillows, a painting or piece of art, your favorite scarf, or blanket. Choose an item that you feel connected to and that gives you a sense of home. Take the item with you to the paint store and find sample strips that include those three colors. Now you’ll have those three colors, plus all the other colors included in each strip.

Next, you’ll want to choose one of those three main colors as your wall color and save the other two as colors you can use in furnishings or other décor in the room.

For any adjacent rooms, select one of the other colors from the original three you picked. Once you’ve done that, pick out a fourth color you can use as an accent color in each room. Find things in that color you can use to connect your rooms together in a cohesive way.

Another point to keep in mind is you want to choose colors that convey the emotion or feeling you wish to convey. Colors are all highly personal so one person’s moody, dark violet walls in their dining room may be the opposite of your sunny, daffodil yellow dream dining room. You’ll probably find suggestions that social areas such as kitchens, family rooms, and dining rooms should be painted with warmer colors such as terra cotta, coral, or a dramatic deep red. Bedrooms, home offices or bathrooms may benefit from more calming nature inspired colors such as sage green or light blue.