How to Choose Interior Paint Colours for Your Toronto Home

Few home improvement activities can provoke “paralysis by analysis” quite like choosing new interior paint colours. With literally thousands of colours across multiple paint brands, narrowing them down can seem overwhelming and puts you at risk of regretting a particular choice. Here’s a short guide from the professional interior painters at CertaPro Painters of Etobicoke to help ensure you are fully satisfied with your ultimate colour selections.

To begin, let’s review a couple of colour basics. First, colour as perceived by the observer generates emotion, and affects the atmosphere of a space. Warm colours such as red, orange, yellow, and brown connote cheer and provide comfort – these can be good for active areas of a home, such as a living or family room, or kids’ recreation room. Cool interior paint colours such as green, blue, violet, and gray are practical and provide tranquility, which is beneficial anywhere a calming atmosphere is desired, such as a bedroom. Second, it’s important to note that colour perception can be influenced by the light source, surface texture, paint sheen, and the colours of surrounding materials, which independently or in combination can cause a given paint colour to look notably different across a range of settings.

With these points in mind, we’ll prepare to survey the sea of possible interior paint colours. A good idea is to start with what you’ll be painting – darker colours can be cozy, and therefore desirable in smaller spaces such as a den. Lighter colours create a feeling of openness, which works well in larger areas such as a living room, or kitchen/dining space. Similarly, fun colours can bring warmth and whimsy to children’s bedrooms, whether through a lighter shade on the walls, or a bolder colour on an accent wall or even the trim. As noted above, it’s also important to consider what other colours are or will be present in the room, so that any art or accessories will work well with your paint selection.

Of course, you’re not likely to go too far before reflecting on your own personal tastes – what are your favourite colours or moods, or those that you gravitate towards in other areas (such as clothing)? From here, you can do a little research into current interior design ideas and trends with a range of free information sources available, from national home improvement publications to smaller blogs, annual or seasonal décor guides, Pinterest, and so on. Paint manufacturers also have reliable views regarding popular colours, given their considerable market research and sales data. Just search “2021 interior painting trends” according to Sherwin-Williams, Benjamin Moore, Dulux, or others. Finally, you might want to see what your friends and neighbours are doing (remember that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!). Or better yet, enlist a best friend to provide their input – you might find they’d love to lend a hand.

However you choose to narrow down the options, you’ll soon get to the point where specific interior paint colours need to be compared. This can be the toughest part, as individual adjacent shades vary so slightly, but there are a few tools and resources you can use to get to the “finish” line. First, you may want to explore one of several online colour visualizers, from CertaPro or any of the major paint manufacturers. These tools allow you to upload and easily colourize photos from your home, so that you can get an approximation of what a new colour would look like without ever leaving your laptop. From there, we go (back) to the well-known paint chip strips, available from major paint manufacturers anywhere paint is sold. These may be old school, but they’re still around for a reason – it’s easy to take a number of them home at no cost and put them directly up against the surfaces to be painted for more representative evaluation. Most paint stores also have light booths which can replicate a variety of light source types, so you can rule certain shades in or out based on your home lighting. There are times however, when the surest way to evaluate a particular colour is to bring home a sample pot or two and apply them side-by-side to a small area of whatever you intend to paint. Your chosen interior painting company should be willing to request several on your behalf from a local paint store, free of charge.

Finally, if you can’t seem to bring everything together (or frankly, if you’d just prefer not to go through all the work), ask your painting company if they’ll offer you colour consultation support. The best companies will have complementary resources, as well as expert relationships for you to take advantage of.

Good luck in your colour selection journey!

For more information on quality painting in the Toronto area, please review our Interior Painting Pricing Guide and Residential and Commercial Case Studies, and call or book online with the best painters in Toronto for a free, detailed estimate. We would be very pleased to get into the finer details of your project, to help define the best value scope for your budget, and bring your home improvement project to life!