FloorTalk – for all the latest flooring fashions

Changing the color of your walls is the least expensive, yet most powerful way to change the look of a room. However, the process can be daunting! If you have ever transformed a white room by painting it a rich color, the end result is worth the often lengthy emotional process.

Here’s how it’s likely to go:

You are flipping through your favorite magazine or you attend a home sales party and see a beautiful room that remotely resembles something in your home. AND YOU WANT IT.

You decide to paint. So, off to the paint store you go……..Being the prepared consumer that you are, you go straight over to the 1000 sample chip chart and hold up your magazine to match the color. Funny though, nothing quite looks the same. Hint: The problem is, the glossy paper from the magazine is showing a photograph of a color which is ink on paper, much the same as the traditional paint chip you are looking at in the store on the massive display rack. If you are the person that comes in knowing for sure that you can remember in your mind exactly what color you saw and exactly what color you want, you find out quickly after looking at the big bad display rack that you have completely lost the mental image.

Never fear, you can do this! So, you grab a couple of samples and start narrowing them down. At this point, some people are so sure and so excited that they order a gallon and wait patiently, (tapping their foot the whole time) while the paint is being custom made. Others are still not sure, so they order a quart in case the color doesn’t work.

You take the gallon that you ordered gallon and run home to put up a sample. Some people order a quart and come home with the same enthusiasm to put up a sample. Usually, both samples sizes are about the same. Too small. Immediately, you begin to judge the color. It’s too light! It’s too dark! It’s too bold! You run around panicking, holding up the swatch to the wall. It doesn’t look the same. Hint: Wait for the paint to dry! Give the color a chance by waiting for it to dry.

After it dries, you return to the swatch that is the size of the palm of your hand. Hint: The swatch needs to be bigger than the palm of your hand to accurately get a preview of what the color will look like. Now that the color has dried you think: It’s too light! It’s too dark! It’s too bold!

The key is, you need a large size swatch. I suggest painting a swatch at least the size of a letter size sheet of paper or a posterboard. Painting the swatch in the corner is also helpful. Keep in mind that it is difficult to get a true idea of the color even from a large swatch. Go into the room every few hours and look at the color again. The color will appear different as the light in the room changes from the sun. If you are hesitant to put paint on the wall, paint a piece of posterboard instead. It will not give you the same results as painting directly on the surface to be painted, but it also doesn’t require painting over!

At this point, you have judged, questioned and second guessed the entire paint industry because you have still not seen the true personality of the color. Hint: Unless you are using samples from companies like Devine Color, Sally Fretwell or Yolo Colorhouse, you are getting a sample of ink printed on paper, not paint, so it will never look the same as the actual paint.

Devine Color: uses 8 1/2 x 11 samples that are full pages of actual paint. The next step is purchasing a small pouch of paint to put your sample on the wall rather than wasting a quart or a gallon.

Sally Fretwell: puts her paint samples on the sticks used to stir the paint. Very cute and creative idea.

Yolo Colorhouse : uses poster size swatches of actual paint to give you a better idea of what the color will look like.

The idea is, you hold or tape these up so you can preview the color and also move it around the room to look at it in different light. Painting a sample on the wall is just one more step to give you the best chance of previewing the color before committing to all 5 walls. (the 5th wall is the ceiling – equally as important) Hint: Don’t look at the color 12″ from your face. Back up! Look at the sample from across the room. (another reason you need a larger swatch!) If you think about it, very few times will you enjoy a paint color 12″ from your face, you will at least be in the middle of the room!

Now that you have your swatch on the wall, beware if you are the quart buyer. Paint is mixed by putting different, condensed pigments into a base. If the color is made up of a small fraction of any of those pigments, it is not humanly possible to achieve the EXACT same amount in a quart, which is one quarter of a gallon, therefore the shade could be slightly off. This is not really a big deal, except that by the time you have reached this point in the process, you want it to be as exact as possible because of all you have gone through with the swatch not looking the same from the beginning! Don’t worry about your Devine color pouch samples matching because those are not created like a quart, they are filled from a larger mixture.
The hardest part is having patience. A paint color cannot truly be appreciated until all four walls are painted, the trim is complete, the flooring is complete, the furniture is back in the room and the pictures are hung on the wall. It is difficult to have the patience during this process, but hopefully these hints will ease your mind during the process.

Top 10 things to keep in mind:

1. Before you go to the paint store, have a clear idea of what you want the room to look and feel like.
2. Bring a picture of the feeling you are trying to achieve. This will help the paint consultant give you better advice about the color you choose resulting in the look you are trying to achieve.
3. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Either ask a designer or the paint consultant to help achieve the color you want. They can both tell you in the color is going to be bold, soft, rich, warm, cool, intense, barely noticeable, the focal point of the room or just a background for the pictures you will place on top of it. Don’t ask for too many opinions from non-experts, this can get confusing and misleading!
4. Consider the size of the room and the source of light. Remember that colors will look differently in your friends home than yours because the surrounding are different as well as the lighting. Colors will also behave differently in smaller rooms with no windows, like powder rooms than in large rooms with many windows.
5. Your best bet is to choose a high quality paint like those mention above that have swatches that are actual paint and not tiny swatches of ink on paper.
6. Look at the swatch in the room at different times of the day and on different walls in the room.
7. When using a test sample, create a sizable sample keeping in mind that it is small and there will be much more of this when the project is done.
8. Don’t examine the sample too close to the wall. Stand back and look at the color with its surroundings. Sometimes it helps to use your hands to block out your peripheral vision so that the existing color is not visible.
9. Give the color a chance. If you aren’t sure about the color and you want one more chance to preview the color, tint the primer as closely as you can to the actual color. This doesn’t work as well with dark colors, but if you are going from white or beige to color, it will at least give you an idea of what you are getting into.
10. Don’t judge the color until all walls are painted, the floors and furniture are in place and all of the pictures are hung on the wall.

For more information on Yolo Colorhouse, see a previous post.