Never Make This #1 Mistake Everyone Makes When Picking Paint Colors
The “Do’s” And “Don’ts” Of Choosing Paint For Your Whole House
I understand, you’ve closed on your new home, you’ve sold most of your old furniture so you can start fresh in the new home, a few pieces you’re keeping are blanket wrapped, while your accents, lamps, textiles, artwork, decorative accessories and home goods are packed in moving boxes, you have the storage container holding all of your life’s treasures, you may already have some new furnishings on order but you want to move in before figuring out the rest.
You can’t wait to get into your new home, remove the past homeowner’s icky or ugly dated carpet, refinish the hardwood flooring, install beautiful broadloom in the bedrooms and finished basement, and you are extremely motivated to have the previous owner’s ‘interesting’ paint colors covered over immediately with a new coat of your favorite paint colors swathed throughout the entire home in order to give you a serene backdrop that feels more like you, so that you can begin decorating and making the home yours, how exciting!
Or, perhaps you are just looking to re-decorate a few rooms in your current home that are truly outdated, like your living room, dining room, and primary bedroom, but you want to start from scratch and re-paint the walls, order all new furniture, rugs, textiles, accessories, replace the lighting, and install new window treatments, a complete room makeover like you’ve watched on HGTV!
The Most Popular Shade of White and Off-White Paint Colors
This is where you need to pause unless money is no object in which case go ahead and temporarily paint out the entire home a white color to have a unified neutral backdrop throughout the home to start out with when you first move in and can change the white or off-white paint into a different wall color down the road, when you or your interior designer or decorator are in a better position to choose the best hue for each individual room.
Some of the most popular white and off-white paint colors are:
Benjamin Moore Linen White OC-146
Atrium White OC-145
Cotton Balls OC-122
Chantilly Lace OC-65
White Heron OC-57
White Dove OC-17
Simply White OC-117
Cloud White OC-130
Navajo White OC-95
Sherwin-Williams Alabaster SW 7008
Sherwin-Williams Pure White SW 7005
Sherwin-Williams Dover White SW 6385
Sherwin-Williams Snowbound SW 7004
Sherwin Williams Eider White SW7014
How Do I know What Color Paint To Use & When Do I Hire the Painter?
Believe me I get the logic. Before you move in to your new home, while the rooms are empty and the flooring has not been updated yet seems like the best time to hire a painting crew to get in there and paint all your new wall colors, without ruining your new flooring, right?
Wrong.
But you think it’s right so you visit the local paint store and start looking at all the paint chips. ALL THE PAINT CHIPS.
Overwhelm sets in.
You start pondering: “I love blue. I love navy blue. But will that be too dark on the walls? Will it go with the couch I have on order at Pottery Barn? Does it match the dining table we’re thinking of ordering at RH Restoration Hardware? Should I paint Sherwin-Williams Naval SW 6244 (2020 color of the year), Charcoal Blue SW 2739, Indigo Batik SW 7602, Sea Serpent SW 7615, or Benjamin Moore’s Hale Navy HC-154, Symphony Blue 2060-10, Champion Cobalt 2061-20, Gentleman’s Gray 2062-20, Kensington Blue 840, Newburyport Blue HC-155?
Or maybe I should just paint an accent wall since the color is so dark?
But if I do that, which wall should I paint the accent wall?
How do I choose the best accent wall?
Would a softer lighter blue with more gray or green in it work better like Benjamin Moore Palladian Blue HC-144, Wedgewood Gray HC-146, Iceberg 2122-50, Ocean Air 2123-50, Smoke 2122-40? Should I paint a lighter friendly blue, something sweeter like Breath of Fresh Air 806, Bird’s Egg 2051-60, or Blue Hydrangea 2062-60?
Picking a paint color is so overwhelming! And how am I supposed to pick an entire room wall color from a one inch paper paint chip? Help!!”
Should I Hire A Paint Consultant? Is It Worth It? Not So Fast…
And then our phones at Lisa Jensen Interior Design start ringing, and I receive contact form inquiries. Homeowners, perhaps even you, looking for someone to save them from this grueling process of picking the perfect paint colors.
Here is my honest advice:
At this early stage in the process I can’t truthfully help you yet either.
Sure I can help you pick some lovely neutral colors that may end up working fine, but I strive as a professional to achieve better than just fine, and I’d like to continue living up to my well-earned stellar reputation from 20-years of running Lisa Jensen Interior Design, designing single rooms and homes in the Essex County MA area.
I strive to find the nuance that the brain understands as beauty and near-perfection when it sees it, yet seems effortless to the average person, but there is art, science, strategy, and intuition behind each selection I make when creating an entire room design and the paint is no different, it is an important, even critical, design element that can’t be forced too early in the process.
How To Create A Cohesive Color Flow Throughout Your Home
Can you imagine trying to choose a final wall paint color, ceiling paint color, and trim paint color from 3,500 paint color options Benjamin Moore has or 1,700 Sherwin-Williams paint colors, before you even know which new sofa and chair upholstery fabrics will be going into your living room and family room?
Or choosing the paint colors before you know what your exact new bedding, window treatments, and broadloom in the Primary Bedroom (formerly known as the master bedroom), Kids Bedrooms, and Guest Bedrooms are going to be?
Or how about finalizing wall colors when there are going to be new area rugs you’ll be purchasing for your dining room from Serena & Lily, and living room from West Elm, once you move in and figure out exactly what you want and what sizes you need?
Coordinating Paint Colors with Furniture, Area Rugs and Artwork
What if the area rug is more modern and has a specific gray you’ll need to coordinate with? Grays have purple, green, and blue undertones so if the gray in the rug you have on order (but don’t have a swatch) has a purple undertone and you choose a gray paint with a rich blue-undertone before you have the rug in person, the rug and walls are not going to look good together, they may look down-right bad and you may end up hating how it looks and paying to have the room re-painted.
Or, perhaps your new eclectic or traditional rug you have on order and waiting for from Pottery Barn, Wayfair, or Ballard Designs will have ten specific colors woven into it?
What do you think your chances are going to be, that you’ll choose one of the exact ten colors in that rug, or two colors in that upholstery fabric, out of 3,500 Benjamin Moore or 1,700 Sherwin-Williams paint color options BEFORE you have those couches, chairs and area rugs delivered into your home or at least planned for and selected?
I’ve been a professional interior designer and decorator for 20 years and I’m not even going to bet on myself making those odds in this situation.
As one of my beloved design professors told me (rest in peace Patricia), “You can’t carry color in your head”.
She was right.
So, this is also not the right time to hire an interior designer or decorator for a paint consultation service yet either.
Paint Color Consultant - Get Help Choosing Paint Colors
You need to be patient when selecting your paint colors, or investing in a professional paint consultation to have an interior designer pick the colors for you, which is why I don’t want you hiring a painting contractor and painting your home until you have the entire home (or single room) interior design planned out first, one of the services Lisa Jensen Interior Design offers locally in the Essex County MA and Rockingham County NH, and virtually if you live anywhere in the USA.
How to Use Color Swatches to Pick Paint Colors
If you want to go room by room that is fine, but again, you need to know where you want to end up (finished room design and decoration plan) in order to begin properly.
You should have your major pieces physically in the room, such as sectionals, sofas, chairs, area rugs, broadloom carpet, artwork, bedding, curtains, roman shades, window treatments, or at least have swatches/samples of each of these textiles for pieces you have on order and THEN you can hire an interior designer or decorator to choose final paint colors for you.
If you are choosing your own paint colors you can now collect those small paint chips or buy larger ones (larger paint swatches are FREE if you’re working with a designer who has a library stocked with larger samples like we do at Lisa Jensen Interior Design), and place the chips next to the new major pieces or the textile swatches until you find an exact match, coordinating color, or any perfect hue that works with those textiles.
“I LOVE THE COLORS YOU PICKED!!! Thank you!”
-Lisa Jensen Interior Design client in Reading, Massachusetts
If choosing from those tiny chips proves too difficult, I have a great solution for you: there is a fantastic product to help you with picking wall paint colors called Samplize. These best selling paint samples can help homeowners visualize how a paint color they are considering will look up on a wall and even wrapped around a corner.
Samplize are an easy and quick, pre-painted simple peel and stick application. No buying and wasting paints, no paint storage, no messy clean up, and no paint disposal, so anything that is more friendly for our precious Mother Earth gets my vote!
They are nicely large samples at 9” x 14.75”, made from two coats of rolled on real manufacturer paint. Samplize have no-damage adhesive backing, are repositionable many times, and available from paint manufacturer’s such as Benjamin Moore, Farrow & Ball, PPG, and Sherwin-Williams. Each sample costs roughly $5.95 to $7.95 and if you are in a hurry you can pay overnight shipping for $6.95.
So, when you are ready to choose final wall paint colors, if you are choosing on your own, I highly recommend investing in Samplize paint samples.
P.S. I don’t have any affiliations so I’m not earning a commission, just sharing a wonderful tool.
Tips for Choosing Interior Paint Colors and Whole House Paint Palette
So, to recap, if you’re moving into a home, or re-decorating an entire room from a clean slate, here is my professional design advice:
Although many homeowners make this #1 Top Interior Design Mistake: Don’t Choose Your Paint Colors First!
Respectfully, don’t listen to a painter who tries to push you to paint immediately. Stand your ground, you have my permission.
Have all new upholstered furniture like sectional sofas, couches, chairs, ottomans, benches, delivered to your home (or at least have the fabric swatches) before choosing your new wall, trim, ceiling, and accent paint colors.
Have any new artwork, area rugs, broadloom carpet, fabric window treatments such as Roman Shades, curtains, drapery panels, bedding, and decorative pillows delivered and installed prior to selecting final paint colors.
Remember, there are 3,500 paint colors offered by Benjamin Moore Paints and 1,700 offered by Sherwin-Williams alone, never mind all of the other paint manufacturers such as Behr, Dunn-Edwards Paints, Pratt & Lambert, Farrow and Ball and many more so it’s best to have an entire design and decoration plan in place ahead of the paint color selection so you know the end goal, where you want your home, or individual room to end up. Even if you aren’t implementing the entire plan or ordering everything right away, at least with a comprehensive room design and decoration plan you can confidently have your room painted in a cohesive paint color that will be successful with the other elements that will eventually be going into the space.
Don’t be hasty and ignore this advice or you could very well regret your paint decisions, then have to live with something you truly dislike or looks ugly, or pay twice and go through the hassle twice to have the room(s) re-painted.
If you are choosing paint colors without the help of a professional decorator, it may be helpful to invest in a large peel & stick paint sample such as Samplize.
If you are overwhelmed with paint color selection you can hire an interior designer or decorator who offers a paint color consultation service, or provides paint selection as part of a larger room design plan service.
Thank you for reading and please share this post if you found it helpful! I love what I do and hope to inspire your interior design and decorating projects!
