Residential Painting: Choosing the Right Paint Color for Your House

Choosing your paint color can be an adventure when you educate yourself, take your time, and make up your mind to enjoy the journey toward a brand new look for your home. Here are a few suggestions we hope will help:

Color Tips and Trends

Color trends in interior paint for 2014 tend to favor deep, muted, or grayed tones, with some clearer hues, but few bright colors. Whites feature slightly grayed versions that create a softer, more unified look.

Using a variety of colors from the same color family on adjoining or adjacent walls and/or doors and trim is a popular decorating technique that lets you blend graduated color to provide the effect of shading. This color gradation can be effective alone or with "white" or another mildly contrasting color for accent. When used on a larger area such as a main wall, this soft contrast can create a focal point for highlighting other décor items such as a mirror, clock, or art collection. Using this mellow contrast on trim and walls can yield a pleasing, integrated effect.

For a bolder, more dynamic look, try several complementary neutral shades accented with deeper, richer, more daring tones on one wall, on trim, or ceiling.

Popular Paint Finishes

Creatively combining paint colors with just the right finish can help you create an ambiance that adds a distinctive flavor to your interior décor. Finishes created by manipulating the still-wet paint surface or layer of colored glaze with various items or implements — such as tissue paper, steel wool, or a combing tool — let you use your creative artistry to add texture, depth, and relief to walls, doors, and trim. This builds interest through variation as the interplay of light and shadow bring an ever-changing palette of color to the eye. Metallic or mineral finishes can add even greater drama.

Color Selection

Today's online color visualizers make it easier than ever to select the right colors for your interior décor. These virtual viewers let you experiment with various color combinations until you find the one that works for you. Some viewers even let you upload your own photo for greater personalization. Viewers can be used online, downloaded to your computer, or used as a mobile app.

Remember: Colors typically look darker on your wall than they do on paint swatches. So, while swatches can give you an idea of which hues you like, they won't replace actually testing the color, under various lighting conditions, either on a section of the wall to be painted or on a piece of posterboard placed against it.