How to Choose Paint Colours

Choosing the right paint can be tricky, especially when there are so many different brands, colours & emulsions out there. And believe it or not, mixing that Farrow & Ball colour at your local hardware store won't give you the same impact as the real thing, no matter what that savvy home interiors enthusiast says. Follow these guidelines and you'll be amazed at the difference. #paintcolours #decorating #colour

Direction

It might not sound like it would make a big difference, but the direction the room faces will change the way a colour looks. East-facing rooms will get large amounts of light for a large portion of the day, west-facing not so much. So select colours that will enhance the space, not simply colours you prefer.

I have a separate blog post on selecting paints depending on the direction the room faces.

Samples

This is a bit of an obvious one but with a not-so-obvious twist. Most people will know to get paint samples to help them choose between a few different colours. Those same people, however, don't know to use them. I'm not doing some sort of odd 'sample-shaming' here. I didn't know this until about a year ago, after we had painted most of the rooms in our house. So let me spare you from repeating some of the mistakes that I made (don't worry, I'll tell you about those mistakes in another post).

Paint samples will be affected by the existing paint colour. Best practice is to in fact paint a piece of paper with 2 coats and hold it up to each of the walls in the room, at different times of day, to see how the colour looks in the different lights.

“... paint a piece of paper with 2 coats and hold it up to each of the walls in the room”

This has the added bonus of not having to squint and tilt your head at various angles to try and differentiate between 6 blobs of colour on the wall. That and you won't have to paint over an uneven surface when you finally do select your preferred paint.

Emulsions

It's true, there are a lot of different types of paint once you've selected your colour. Ultimately, if you're just painting a room, then you only really need to choose between two types: matt or sheen. Matt is more popular and the standard type of paint, so your best bet is to go with that if you're not wanting anything that will reflect the light and shimmer. Sheen can work well for small dark rooms or as a feature wall, though you do not have follow that as a rule of thumb. Matt paints will work just as well in these circumstances too. Overall, matt is more likely to suit the room whilst sheen is a bit more particular.

My living room feature wall is Hague Blue from Farrow & Ball in their Modern Emulsion, which is their sheen emulsion. I absolutely love it and wouldn't want a matt colour on this wall. We in fact got the matt emulsion first (it's still there on the inner section of the fireplace) and we decided it didn't work. We loved the colour so tried out the sheen and it's here to stay.

Lucy's Hillside House | Content Creator & Blogger