Tips on Choosing a Color Scheme for Your Home

Color selection can sometimes be the hardest decision among our customers when working with us on house painting projects. Its common and normal to have a hard time settling in on color choices and committing to them. This page lays out some steps to help navigate the paint color selection process.

Color can affect mood, perceptions of size of the space, and other factors that are important to keep in mind. Color choices can also affect home value in some cases, most owners want a color that will appeal to most buyers in the market, even when they are not actively looking to sell.

Finding Inspiration

Many homeowners start their color research with paint swatches from the local home repair store. Instead, take inspiration from colors you wear and that appeal to you. Do you have a throw or curtain that you really love? Start there.

The first step in color selection by reviewing swatches as their local hardware or paint store, this can be a good way to start but also tends to overwhelm the decision making process. A better starting point is thinking about what colors you like most, and what you find appealing. From there look at ranges in that palate on color swatches, and take a few home with you from the store. If you are working with a professional painting contractor like us, we can also help with recommendations, color swatches, and other tools like color visualizers to help you get an idea for what that color would like like on your home.

Another place to start is with a drive. Drive around your neighborhood and see if there are homes that strike you. Take pictures and note of the colors you’re coming back to time and again. This will help narrow the field of colors.

Choosing a Palette

After finding your initial color picks and narrowed down the selections, its time to start thinking about colors that can pair with or compliment the primary choices. Ideally pick around 3 colors that go with your primary choice. These will be used for items like accent walls and trim. For secondary colors its generally better to choose neutral colors. The best places to use a stand-out secondary color are front doors which often work well with bold choices. Trim is usually deeper neutral colors, or white. White trim is the most common paint color we see in the NW Arkansas service area.

Test Top Color Picks

Before you start painting, its important to do some testing to make sure there are not any surprises with the color selected.  Using your selected color pallet, get a small amount of paint in that color to test with. Paint poster boards from a crafts store with the colors and set them up in rooms around the home. This helps see the dried color in the actual lighting and environment they will live in. Your home’s lighting can change how colors look, and its important to see how that plays out in the real world. This is also an opportunity to set each color in the selected palette next to each other and verify they look good next to each other.

Paint

The final step is to apply your selected colors to the home. Knowing you tested and did due diligence will give you peace of mind as the project gets completed. If you need help with a painting project, we are here to help. We can service homes in most of the NW Arkansas area including Fayetteville, Bentonville, Lowell, Rogers, and other nearby areas.

We’d love to be considered for your exterior painting project. Call today or use our online estimate scheduler set up a free, in-home estimate from our team.