How to choose the paint colour for your house

A new look for Sherwin-Williams in Cranbrook. — Photo by Kimberly Shellborn

You walk confidently into the paint store knowing you want gray paint.  As you stop in front of the color wheel and all your confidence fades away as you stare at the numerous choices.  Spalding gray, front porch, pavestone and march wind are all shades of gray on the Sherwin-Williams color collection. Getting nervous, you scratch the idea of gray and go to grab a nice white. Simple right? Then you see: white flour, alabaster, pacer white, lavender wisp and quartz white among the thousands of others. And if you go into greens or blues the list never stops. So how do you choose what color to paint the walls of your home?

To break it down and make it a bit simpler I asked Brian Tompkins, store manager at Sherwin-Williams in Cranbrook to give me a few tips that can help people get started.

Brian Tompkins, manager of new Sherwin-Williams store. — Photo by Kimberly Shellborn

• Look at the constants in your house, the flooring, tiles, countertops and backsplashes. Unless you are building from scratch or renovating everything at the same time, you will be stuck with some of these fixed elements and they need to become part of your color palette.   “Flooring may be there 10 to 12 times longer than the paint,” said Tompkins, “make sure it (the color of paint) goes with the flooring.”
• Although most of your fixed elements are probably a neutral color, even neutrals have color undertones.  To properly choose colors to go with your fixed elements, you need to know what undertone colors you are working with. To understand undertones see the article How to bring out the best in your home written in an earlier blog.
• Create continuity by selecting a color theme for your entire house. Choose a color that you love so that you won’t quickly tire of it. “Start with the main color,” said Tompkins.  He continued that once you have a main color you can easily go up or down the color scale to get a different shade of the same color to create an accent color. Using one main color does not limit you. Almost the opposite, within this hue you can choose neutral colors in the same tone, bolder colors or go to contrasting colors that compliment the original color.
• Start with the largest or most prominent room; usually the kitchen or living room.  If you use a neutral color as a main color— again making sure this neutral color has the correct undertone — you can add complementary accent color, either on the same color hue just going up or down the slide to make it a darker or lighter, or a contrasting color on the opposite side of the color wheel.
• Look to existing furnishing for color inspiration.  Pick up colors from fabrics, artwork or a favourite accessory and use them in different rooms throughout your home.
• Use one of your colors in a different way in each room. In one room it can be an accent color that shows up in the fabric on the cushions, and another room it can be the feature wall and yet another you can use it to paint a bedside table.
• If you love color and have a certain hue in mind for a specific room, you can start there instead. Looking out from the bold-hued room, choose a softer, more subdued color for the next rooms or for open areas.
• Select one or two colors that all your rooms will share to keep the continuity throughout the house.