A house feels like such a part of ourselves that choosing the paint colors is both daunting and paralyzing. At least it was for me when I wanted a whole house repaint for my San Jose ranch style home.
I don’t know what it is…I try too hard to find the right combo of colors while worrying that I am hopelessly out of date with my choices. I want to feel good when I look at my rooms and, if I am honest, want my friends to love my choices too. Maybe that is silly but without an artistic eye and an intimate understanding of the color wheel, I am doomed to make and have to live with bad paint choices. Or in my case, zero paint choices because I have a stack of paint swatches that I just can’t decide between.
This is where good color consultants like Janice come in. In an hour or two they will check out your interior, your style, your furnishings, your color comfort and choose paint hues that work together in one room and throughout the house. They will cut weeks and probably years off this process.
The fact is that so many paints in the store are just ugly on your walls. Paint companies have to offer a choice but any knowledgable paint shop owner will tell you that really only 100 of the 2,500 paints in the Benjamin Moore line look good in a house. The best colors have multiple pigments that subtly shift as the sun moves throughout a room.
A color consultant can also work in more complex rooms, like kitchens with backsplash tiles, floor tiles, wood cabinets, and granite… which if tied together properly will look inviting and wonderful, but if not it will be chaotic and lack harmony. In a room with lots going on the layman may choose to go with a light color because they feel a color would add more chaos when in reality a darker hue might tie it all together. It takes a trained eye to make it work which is why using an expert is critical and well worth the money.
A color consultant can also help with flow. A house with solid transitions between rooms can allow for different colors in each room. For houses with smoother transitions between rooms then it is likely that the best bet is to choose one color for those adjacent rooms. Again, this is where a trained eye can help.
One of the other things that a color expert helps with is our preconceived notions on paints and hues. If choosing wall colors isn’t difficult enough, I have learned that bright white ceilings make other colors look dingy. So if your trim is white, then your ceiling should be a warmer white. Perhaps white isn’t even the best choice. It is quite complicated, more complex than you can imagine.
Painting is one of the best ways to update your space. If you have been thinking of painting, have been to three paint stores and have a drawer full of swatches and still don’t really know where to begin… hire a color consultant to help and your paint project will be well on its way in a short period of time.
by Nicole van der Hulst