Filed under: Beautiful Home
The color of your walls might just be the most dominant element of any room. That means finding the perfect paint color might be stressful. Here are a few tips and suggestions to help direct your search for the right hue. Interior design expert Libby Langdon gave sister site ShelterPop an overview on how to make neutrals pop.
Sound impossible? Well, she wasn't talking about beige.
Check out her list of fun neutrals that are never boring. Among her picks: a light blue, a khaki, a white, a muted yellow -- and even a navy blue.
Meanwhile, you may want to watch out: trendy colors are alluring, but do you really want to wake up to a faux Italian pallet of red, gold and green every morning? Trends don't last for more than a moment, but your paint choice certainly does.
ShelterPop can steer you in the right direction and tell you which of-the-moment combinations to avoid.
Among the list of things to avoid, designer Kelly Berg said, are: greige, chocolate brown with blue, the all white kitchen, and of course, faux Italian.
Here's a ShelterPop décor don't: picking a color on a whim.
You've been on the hunt for that perfect shade for your bathroom walls, and you finally think you've found it -- in the paint aisle, at your local hardware store.
Word to the wise: Don't do it.
Why not? Because the lighting can fool you. "Lighting has a huge effect on the appearance of colors and many stores use 'cool white' fluorescent lighting that casts a bluish tint, even though you may not notice it," says interior designer and color expert Kelly Porter. The lighting in your home, on the other hand, is most likely incandescent, which gives paint colors a warmer appearance.
"In addition to lighting, most paint chips are small, so it's sometimes hard to see the color's true undertones or level of intensity," Porter says.
Once you think you've found a color, how can you make certain that it's the one for you?
At ShelterPop, an interview with Dee Schlotter, PPG Pittsburgh Paint's National Color brand manager, can shed some light on the process.
Schlotter spoke to ShelterPop after her company unveiled the world's record-breaking 17-foot paint swab -- because sometimes that tiny square just doesn't cut it. And we suggest you take her advice -- she's repainted six times over the last 10 years!
For people who don't have gigantic swatches, she said: "You can paint right on your wall, behind a framed picture to get a sense of it, or paint a piece of poster board and put it up."
For ceiling testing, she said, pick up meat packing paper from the deli. Paint the white side, then use double-stick tape on the other side to stick it to your ceiling.
"Because it's so thin, it will stay up and because it's so large, you'll really get a sense of what it looks like," she said.
Neat! And much easier to execute than the Sistine Chapel....