How to decide what colour to paint your home

Deciding the colour scheme of your home can be a laborious task.

After all, it’s a heck of a job to repaint an entire house or room, and you don’t want to have to go back to the drawing board if it doesn’t come out how you pictured. On the other hand, a new coat of paint can have an incredibly positive effect on the look and feel of a room. In this spirit, we’ve created a guide to helping you choose colours for your property’s interior!

Is trendy always a good thing?

From the avocado-green bathrooms of the 80s to the loud, textured designs of the 60s, trends are great for defining the era in which you live. But you don’t need to be cornered into a style just because that’s what modern trends demand. There are many homeowners who have excitedly picked out colours and designs that suit their tastes perfectly, only to be persuaded that they should go for a more fashionable or safe design instead. We believe you shouldn’t let external influence dictate which colours best suit you and your home. If you have a selection of colours you’re excited about, it’s worth following that through to see if your vision can become reality. However, you’ll need to be sure that your choice complements the rest of the elements in the room.

Work with the room

What elements are there on your wall? Do you have a theme for ornaments that you’ve hung up, such as wooden or metallic? These elements will have already defined a spectrum of tones and – assuming that you intend to keep these elements – we recommend that you pick a colour within that spectrum to avoid clashes. You will also need to consider the same thing for your floors. If you’re still undecided on a colour, then one great way to get some inspiration is to take your artwork from around the room and put it all together. Is there a theme or a colour that stands out? This can be very helpful way to choose.

See the light

Have you considered the room lighting will affect your colour choice? Light comes in different colours, usually blue or yellow. Are these tints going to make your colours come out how you expected? For instance, your light blue wall lit by incandescent (yellow coloured) bulbs could end up looking a little greener than you imagined in the shop. Fluorescent lights have a blue tint, which also goes for sunlight. Colours that are particularly bright or strong might be overpowering if too much strong blue light hits it. For this reason, you might consider avoiding bright colours for walls with large windows next to them.

Try before you buy

Test out the colour you’ve chosen before you decide to buy enough to cover the whole room. Sure, it’s possible to undo any mistakes you’ve made by simply painting over it, but that’s easier said than done. The confidence you get from testing out the colour will make for a much less nervous painting job. Just make sure you’ve tested a large enough area, ideally on the wall – perhaps the size of two A4 pieces of paper. With our previous tips in mind, you might want to keep an eye on it during different times of the day to see how it reacts to different levels/sources of light.

Final tips

Lastly, here are a few mini-pointers that we thought might be quite helpful!

• Don’t rely on white walls to make a room seem larger – this is a myth! Bold colours can bring out the best in a small room.
• When painting a ceiling, a single colour can unify the room and create a soothing environment. Consider using a colour a few shades lighter than the walls. Since ceilings tend to be darker than walls generally, this can make the room feel airier.
• Consider the colour proportions in the room. If your main colours in the room are grey (for the walls) and blue (for furniture and fixtures), then you might want to make it immediately evident what the primary and secondary colours are by designing a room with a 70:30 primary and secondary colour ratio. This will actually end up creating a more effective sense of balance than having a 50/50 colour split.

Hopefully, you can now be more confident about moving forward with your dream home’s dream decoration! If you’re looking to redecorate your property, you might be in the market for some finance for light development. If you contact us, we can make sure that you get the best deal tailored to your situation!

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