3 Tips for Picking Paint Colors

This post has been a long time coming!

I’m talking today about one of the hardest things in decorating (in my personal opinion!) – paint colors! Choosing paint colors is very exciting and stressful at the same time. A new paint color can completely transform your space. And it’s relatively inexpensive. But, at the same time there are SO many choices and I feel like most of the time a new paint color leads to a bunch of other new decor/projects.

Your paint colors also really set the tone for your decor. In this post I’m going to talk about interior wall colors, but there are a lot of other paint decisions and choices that can change up your homes look as well – trim color, cabinet colors, exterior colors. 

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The cabinet color in these two pictures is the same! Lighting makes a huge difference!

Paint is definitely something I stressed over when we built our house (see my posts on our building process here and here). I had an idea of the colors I wanted but I spent hours and hours on Pinterest and Google trying to look at different images of colors in actual houses. But, I have to say I’m pretty pleased with how my choices turned out. So, here are my top 3 tips when choosing paint colors:

1. Only use a few paint colors // It’s hard to create a cohesive look across your house when every single room is a different color. I was kind of forced to limit the number of paint colors we have because when we built our house only 2 paint colors were included in the budget and any more was an additional cost. I obviously wanted more than 2 paint colors but didn’t want to go crazy, so I settled on 4 colors. It really turned out to be a blessing because everything now flows from room to room and I didn’t have to worry about one room sticking out because it was a totally different color than everything else.
2. Be consistent in open spaces //  Nowadays, a lot of floor plans are very open concept. Our whole first floor with the exception of our master bedroom/bathroom and laundry room is open. You can see one room from most of the others. If you paint more than one color in these kinds of rooms, it can be hard to transition between colors. The easiest way to create cohesion is to stick with the same color in any open space. The only exception I would make to this is when you have a room that is clearly defined but open, and I would stick with paint in the same color family. We did this with our dining room, pictured below. We have two openings to other areas of the house from the dining room, but it is very clearly it’s own space. I decided to paint this room 2 shades darker than the rest of the first floor (on the same paint card).
3. Neutral tones are easiest to work with // I typically stick with less dramatic decor and keep things light and bright. I do like to add some accent colors with furniture and decor though. Adding accent colors here and there is a lot easier to do when you have a neutral base on the walls. Grays, beiges/taupes, and whites are all great neutrals. Blue is my favorite color so I decided to make a guest bedroom and bathroom blue, but it would have been way too much to do blue in any other room. There are a lot less painting mistakes and regrets when you stick with neutrals!

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Check out this page to see the paint colors in our house!

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Lastly, I recently helped my mother in law pick new paint colors for her parents house and I wanted to share what colors we picked:

Entryway/living room/kitchen: Agreeable Gray SW 7029

Bedrooms/bathrooms: Repose Gray SW 7015

Be on the lookout for a post with their house transformation next week! [See it now here!]