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Wednesday, March 1st, 2017
Cynthia Rowley for Hooker Furniture Wallis 2 Cushion Sofa: Here’s that blue couch example with whitewashed walls perfectly framing it.
A lot of people love a good burst of color. Colors are powerful in creating emotions and setting up the right ambience. Yet the idea of being left to pick a paint for the accent wall – let alone the entire house – could be a little too much for some.
Whether you are going to paint an urban space, suburban or a country habitat, the methods are quite the same. When picking colors using paint chips, be sure to choose your favorite. Choose a darker and a lighter shade as well.
Colors can look brighter on walls but not so much when still on a tiny chip. You could get overwhelmed by what your eventual choice would be so be careful in making your decision.
Colors You Wear
If you live in an urban area, it would be wrong to have a wardrobe that does not have white, black and other neutrals. So take a careful look in your closet and find out what colors dominate. If you have loads of denims, then a blue palette would be great in your urbanized home.
If you’re a diverse dresser, then create a palette that equally diverse. Have a color for each occasion or season, even for each mood.
Have a Color Backbone
Just like any sturdy framework, your color palette must also have a backbone. The colors that you choose will support the rest of the design elements. For instance, you can have cream walls framing your pink couch. Or you can have orange accents in a mainly black ambience.
Keep in mind that you can always repaint. You can play with colors and repaint as often as you like. You can have a lovely accent wall one time or have all four walls painted in one hue.
This year, lime green, emerald green, and turquoise are piping hot.
Strategize
When picking a color palette, it pays that you also employ some strategy. Get inspired by stuff that you see in the city. If you live in a rural area, be sure to check out the meadows and landscapes. Let the skies inspire you. Find a photo or a work of art that will help narrow down your color options.
Take a careful look at the paintings that are now hanging on your walls – you will soon notice that there is a particular hue that you have been naturally drawn to.
Cool, light and pale colors regress to make a room appear larger. Deeper and darker colors expand so they tend to make rooms appear smaller. A lot of spaces ask for rich, dark colors so find out what your room requires.
Even huge swatches of paint cannot compare to an actual paint test. Before committing, be sure that you paint on the actual work or you end up doing a lot of guesswork.
Lighting conditions will also affect the color’s eventual appearance. Test the color in shadowy areas as well as under direct light. Observe also how the paint looks like during the day and also at night. Switch to artificial light if natural light does not complement the color of paint that you are going to pick.
FFDM’s Viniterra Collection shows this King Mantle Bed perfectly nestled in equally neutral walls. You won’t see colors clashing in this lovely bedroom photograph.
Visualize
Another essential step to picking the right color of paint is to plan the color that you want for the rest of your home. Never ever choose a wall color after picking your furnishings. So, if you have fallen in love with a navy blue sofa, there’s no longer any point in painting the room red, is there?
Don’t be anxious that you would be left with zero options because of the many factors that you need to consider. Remember that you have almost every color of the spectrum at your disposal.
Tags: choosing paint, home painting, McCreerys, McCreerys Home Furnishings, paint, painting a home, painting project, painting task, picking paint
Posted in Color Schemes, Interior Design 101, Interior Design Elements | Comments Off on Paint-Picking, Experimenting, and Liking It
Tuesday, May 31st, 2016
Cynthia Rowley 1586-80113-BLK1 Flirt End Table: The pastel pink walls offer this black table and floral throws a wonderful backdrop.
Have you seen people selecting color swatches before? This sight could go both ways – it could be a lovely sight if the homeowner is having fun choosing the colors or it could be a depressing one for those who do not know what they are looking for. If you don’t want to become the latter, then read through these tips and find out how you should correctly test paint colors –
Paint the Wall
The first step is to just directly paint the wall. This guideline is applicable both for interior and exterior walls. The best way to get a sense of how the color would turn out in your home is to brush a portion of your inner or outer wall with the color that you have chosen.
Some experts say that choosing a board just won’t saturate in the same manner so it is best to paint it directly then find out how the color would really affect the overall look. Boards do not offer the same texture as walls and this could really affect the look eventually.
Should You Hire Painters…
If you have decided to delegate the painting project, see that you will be able to provide sample cans of your preferred colors. A lot of painting contractors prefer it that way. Paints that have been tinted (or mixed) means you will have to take the colors no matter what the result. Sample cans, on the contrary, cost only $3 to $8 so you can experiment with smaller cans at first rather than wasting gallons of tinted paint that you won’t use in the end.
FFDM Antebellum Collection: The burst of colors inside this room renders a lovely rustic yet homey appeal.
Two-Coat Painting
Two coats are the minimum amount of coverage that a wall typically needs. The first coat is often the primer while the second coat makes a huge difference in the way the paint color would register.
The primer is often used for richer or deeper paint colors. There is a small selection of such paint that can be made in connection with specific primers. Make sure that you also paint in large swaths (no less than 1 foot by 1 foot) so you would have a good sense of what the end-result would be.
Paint More Than One Wall
The paint colors that you are testing will register differently also depending on the amount of light that hits the walls. Paint a wall that does not get directly hit with sunlight and one that does. You will soon notice that darker rooms tend to make paint appear darker, too. In essence, the pink paint that you chose for your daughter’s bedroom may not necessarily work with the master bedroom or the bathroom.
Colorful landscaping may also affect the paint color on your walls. Light coming from the garden or front yard could stream through, giving your walls a much different color than you originally imagined. The green trees could cast a different glow in a room that is already painted orange.
Consider also what time of day you would be spending inside the rooms. You would, of course, want the colors to look great when you are inside the room.
Test with Light
This is the simplest way to test how a paint color would look in a room. Have the artificial lighting turned on once you test paint a wall. Make sure that your room’s lighting will complement the colors that you have chosen. Pick a bulb or lamp that will not just look good with the paint color but also be useful. For example, it would be pointless to have a lamp that makes the paint look amazing but won’t allow you to read inside that room.
This makes it necessary to have the lighting already in place when considering your paint colors. Different bulbs offer a different kind of glow at different times of the day and with different kinds of paint colors.
Tags: choosing paint, McCreerys, McCreerys Home Furnishings, paint, paint color search, painting a home, painting advice, painting tips, testing paint
Posted in Color Schemes, Interior Design 101, Interior Design Themes | No Comments »
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