How to Choose Paint Colors

Although choosing paint colors is a personal matter, guided by your own tastes, there is lots of advice available to help guide you in your selections. There are even complete color palettes defined by designers so that you can just pick the color you like and follow the palette for the rest.

Decide by Color
If you love color, don't be afraid to choose a color you love whether decorating a room or painting the exterior of your house.  Consider that you and your family will want to live with your choice for some time when deciding on your favorite forest green or deep purple, but there is usually a way to make even very dramatic color work in any room or on the exterior of the house. If you are drawn to deep or bright colors, but not sure you can live with a strong dose of it, try using the brightest and deepest colors as accents to a neutral background. Or test the waters first by just adding small pops of color that are easily changed, such as pillows, pictures and other small accent pieces, to see how you like looking at the color over time.
Another idea is to vary the depth of the color by season, with many people leaning toward pastels in the spring and summer, and moving to deeper shades of the same colors for the winter.
If color doesn't catch your interest easily and you are uncomfortable with color, it would be a good idea to choose from designer-planned palettes so that you feel comfortable that you're making the correct choices.

Choose by Favorite Items
If you have a painting, rug, vase, picture or any other item that you love, pull the colors from that item for your room's color palette. If you don't have the right thing for your room, shop for useful or decorative items that you really love and then plan the room around those colors. Even a favorite blouse or dress can inspire the perfect paint colors for your home.

Remember, although you'd like to live with your paint colors for a while, it's not too hard to tone down or change a regrettable choice of interior paint.