Choosing Paint Colors

Making the title for this post “How to choose paint colors” was what I wanted to name it but really don’t have any expertise to offer you on the subject. In fact choosing paint colors was the source of almost all of my stress before we actually took possession of our home. HOWEVER, I can offer you my non-professional advice and experience letting you in on the secret of what I did that fortunately worked out extremely well!

For all of you “regular home owners” like me, I think we can all agree that choosing colors is intimidating. You stand there in front of a huge panel of color and you can only choose one. Then top that off with rooms that you might want multiple colors for, open concept color changes, etc. It’s just down right overwhelming.

To try and help with your next paint color selection here are three tips:

Tip 1

Buy paint from somewhere that has great color swatches with multiple shades on a swatch.

Of course I didn’t follow this advice because I was looking for a deal. After-all I was going to be painting the entire house, so getting a good deal on high quality paint was essential for me not to bust the decorating budget in the first weekend of home ownership.

I love the SICO paint swatches found at Kent Building Supplies and usually go there to get fun colour names and good quality paint at a good price. But this time I knew I was going to be able to buy all of the paint I needed at 50% off at Home Hardware so I was swayed by the sale to the Beauti-Tone paint. I was really pleased with the paint, but I do admit it was a risk as I had never used it before. What I didn’t like about Home Hardware was that each color swatch was an individual sheet. For those of you out there who are color experts and can tell which grey has a blue undertone and which grey has a green undertone these swatches wouldn’t scare you off – all I knew was that there is a such thing as undertones and messing with them would be terrible once they are on the walls next to each other.

Thankfully Home Hardware has some super fun paint collections that made the experience fun again. More about that in a minute…

Tip 2

Plan the colors for the whole house (or as much of it as you can) at the same time.

Not everyone has the luxury of painting their whole house at the same time or choosing the colors for every room. This is exactly my point… especially if you are not painting everything be sure to work around the walls you won’t be painting to they don’t stand out (in a bad way) when you’re done your painting project. 

If you re-painting everything try to come up with a theme that you want to bring through the whole house to help with the flow. I know I might sound all “interior designer” right now, but I am merely repeating what my color expert friends told me and what I have learned by watching every episode of Masters of Flip (several times I might add).

Back to the paint collections from Home Hardware… I chose all of our colors from the National Parks of Canada collection. I loved that they each represented a Canadian National Park and since we purchased the house in the Canada 150 celebration year I thought it was a fun collection to choose.  

Tip 3

Take a risk. 

In the end, it really is “just paint“. If there is a color you have been dreaming of trying but are scared of… DO IT! You can always re-paint (or close the door).

I felt this way in our master bedroom. I saw a bedroom design done by Angela Price (wife of hockey player Carey Price, mom to Liv Price & Lifestyle blogger) that I fell in love with. I loved the dark walls and the general concept of the room. It has since become the inspiration for the wall color and some of the design features in our master bedroom.

And finally…
The colors I chose (by room):

• Main area (kitchen/living room) – Whooping Crane
• Entrance and walls leading downstairs – Grey Seal
• Little Dude’s room & Guest room #1 (bath rooms have chair rails so we decided to paint them the same colors) – Top half: Morning Mist from //:: National Park & Bottom half: Blue Heron 
• Master bedroom – Dark Sky Night & Whooping Crane for the top border created by an existing chair rail
• Guest room #2 & Office – Northern Reflections 
• Rec room – Cobblestone Beaches