From considering restrictions in your space, to what to ask when choosing moody or neutral paint colors, here’s the 6 questions I ask clients when specifying paint colors for their home.
Choosing a paint color shouldn’t be that hard, right?
Wrong.
It’s HARD, but I’m here to help. I’ve been specifying color and painting spaces for the last four years in the Seattle area and these are the questions I use to narrow down my options to make it a lot less painful (and actually fun)!
What are the restrictions in the space?
When I say restricticon, I mean identifying the things that you must work with in order for there to be cohesion.
Furniture, counters, backsplash, floors, rugs, curtains, wallpaper, and even throw pillows are all restrictions if you’re not planning to swap them out.
Restrictions are good because they provide a solid starting point. It’s actually so much harder to specify color when you’ve got a completely blank slate.
Maybe you have a patterned chair that you want to design around. What colors are in there you can pull from?
With some rooms, you might find you have competing undertones in fixed elements (like countertops and backsplashes) and in others, it’s really just about finding a color or undertone in a rug and working around that.
Actually take time to look at what colors and tones exist in the room already and list them out. This is an important step but often we just don’t do it and it makes a huge difference!
What’s the vibe I’m going for?
This question matters mostly to determine if you want to be narrowing down colors based on how light or dark you want them. If you’re going for moody, we know we want to choose paint colors with an LRV of 25 and under.
If we want bright and airy, 60 LRV or higher will be your jam. If you’re wanting grounded but not lighttttt but not too dark neutral, 40-59 will be a sweet spot.
These are my general guidelines, not hard-and-fast rules. LRV tells us how much light a color reflects, but it doesn't tell us everything about how that color will feel in a room. Saturation, undertones, natural lighting and surrounding finishes all influence the final result.
How’s the lighting?
This question is really important because some colors don’t work with certain lighting. For example (and don’t hate me) but white just won’t work in a room that doesn’t get enough direct sunlight. When I say “white” I mean off-white and creams too. They fall flat, shadowy and almost never turn out like the photos in magazines and Architectural Digest.
And trust me, I have tested this out just to be sure; I’ve attempted to paint a living room with multiple windows and neither got great sunlight but I figured I’d give it a go since there were windows and….I wish I could get those hours back.
But now I’m here to share the truth around white paint and how it really only shines when it gets amazing direct sunlight. (There are other guidelines around white but I’ll address that in another blog.)
Interestingly, though, if you’re going for moody, as long as you have enough lamps to support the darkness you’ll be good to go in a lot of cases.
Again, this can be a case by case basis and there are always nuances, but the natural lighting conversation doesn’t necessarily apply here.
Does this color need to coordinate with other colors in the home?
This color is key because if you’re, for example, doing a dining room that’s visible from a sitting room and there’s also a hallway between, you don’t want the dining room to be a completely different color scheme and look sad and alone with it’s own concept. (I mean, you can, but it just won’t be as cohesive but it’s your home so you can technically do anything your heart desires.)
But if you’re looking to make the home feel cohesive, you need to consider what colors are already in the spaces you can see from that room (or consider if you’d like to paint new colors to match).
I like to think that if you can shut the door (bathrooms, bedrooms, office, playroom) then you can totally make a concept that’s unrelated to the rest of the home.
But if there isn’t a door and you can see other rooms/spaces, coordinating colors will just have more flow and cohesion.
Is there something blocking you from choosing a paint color?
This is the part where I like to get clear on if there is anything that just isn’t working that I do feel I can swap or eliminate.
Maybe you thought you wanted to keep the coffee table but after a lot of deliberation you realize you’ve had it for 10 years, it’s super scratched and you didn’t even realize it isn’t even your aesthetic anymore but just haven’t thought about replacing it.
Sometimes you do need to take a look at what you’ve just been collecting in the room that hasn’t actually been making the space better.
It’s been the case for me when I realize that there’s sometimes just that ONE item in a room I’m working on that is throwing off the whole palette without even realizing.
Do you have this in your space?
What undertones exist in the room/space already?
This question is so important when you’re picking neutrals because all neutral colors have undertones and often you don’t realize it until they’re on your wall and not working at all in your home.
No one tells us that there’s actually 9 undertones to choose from with any given neutral. It’s a little more complicated than just warm vs cool-toned colors. (And exactly why I like to get in your Seattle Eastside space, analyze the undertones of your home furniture and non-removable elements like counters, floors, fireplace etc to narrow it down and find colors that complement your space beautifully.)
Ask yourself the dominant temperature: warm or cool?
Ask yourself the dominant colors you see? Blue, green, grey, white, cream yellow, red, etc?
Putting this into practice, maybe you have lots of creams and greens. You could choose a green-beige thats going to add warmth and complement the green.
Or maybe you have a handful of jewel-toned blue items, so maybe you choose a blue-grey to make them pop. (Jewel tones look soooo good with grey even if you’re a little scared of reverting back to the millennial grey era.)
_
I really hope this helped you even just start to ideate on some paint colors a little more clearly. I feel like there’s an abundance of paint color suggestions online but not a lot of questions to help narrow down the kind of color we need to make our space come to life.
If you’re on Seattle’s Eastside and need help with paint colors to finish your space, book a discovery call with me here.
Hi! I’m Nancy!
A Home Color Expert, and I’m here to help you choose paint colors for your home without all the stress. If you’re in the Seattle area, you can book an in-home color consultation with me.