I’m getting ready to submit my paint color selections for our seventh house to the contractor, and I thought this would be the perfect time to let you all in on my easy trick for selecting a whole house color palette. This simple three step process helps to narrow down the paint store selections, so you can create a whole house color scheme with zero stress and no second guessing! It’s the next best thing to hiring a design professional!
Have you ever googled “how to choose a whole house color scheme”? Let me tell you, there are quite a few articles on this topic on the internet. With so many different colors to choose from, selecting the perfect shade can feel super intimidating.
And so often online articles on how to choose a color scheme for your house have a lot of technical terms in them like ~ complementary, analogous, monochromatic ~ which can either create a light bulb moment for you or make you doubt yourself even more.
Color theory is absolutely fascinating to me, and I love learning about the psychology of color! But I really don’t think you need to take a class on understanding the color wheel in order to choose the perfect paint palette for your home. These three simple tips will boost your paint-color-selecting confidence, and make the process way more fun!
Tip #1 – Describe Your Vibe
Before you even head to the paint store, figure out how you want your home to feel. Make a list of words that describe the vibe you want to create.
- Do you want your home to feel creative, contemporary and cheerful? You may lean towards colors that are light, bright and clear.
- Does luxurious, glamorous and distinctive sound more like you? Then colors that are cool, clear and intense might be more your speed.
- Elegant, graceful, romantic and casual? Try muted cool colors.
- Warm, comfortable and casual? Try warm, intense muted shades.
I want my home to feel inviting, casual and comfortable, so I’m going for a muted color palette.
Tip #2 – Find Your Inspiration
Yep, more homework. But this is designed to really help you narrow down your options before heading to the overwhelming paint store filled with thousands of paint swatches.
Maybe your inspiration will be a painting you love, a gorgeous piece of fabric or a vintage rug (like me!). But whatever your inspiration, having something to use as a jumping off point will really help you to narrow down your options.
My inspiration:
Tip #3 – Start With a Paint Color Collection
Once you’ve figured out your vibe and found your inspiration, you’re ready to head to the paint store. Rather than staring blankly at the wall of a million paint swatches, take a look at the paint color collections. Every paint brand offers collections of paint colors. These collections are often featured in beautiful brochures that include not only the paint swatches but also a few pictures of rooms that have been painted with these colors.
These paint color collections are typically put together by the brand’s design team and feature colors that harmonize with one another and pair beautifully for color flow from room to room.
Selecting your home’s paint colors from a collection like this takes the guesswork out of creating a whole house color scheme. And it’s the closest thing to hiring a professional designer.
Knowing that I wanted to create a comfortable, casual, inviting home and using the vintage rug I bought at a consignment store years ago (and have loved since the moment I first laid eyes on it), I selected this Colors of Historic Charleston paint color collection by Duron Paints for Sherwin Williams. And from there, I found my exterior house color (State Street Pink), my kitchen island color (Hurricane Blue) as well as the paint colors I plan to use in the library/media room (Hunley) and my husband’s office (Tradd Street Green).
Every single color I end up using in our home may not come from this collection, but every color I choose will be one that pairs nicely with these colors. Using this palette as a guide will create an effortless flow from room to room.
Most often, it’s best to choose wall colors last, which is why I’ve only selected a few bold wall colors to start in spaces where I’ve already considered things like flooring, rugs and furnishings. All of the main areas, bathrooms and bedrooms in our home will be painted Sherwin Williams Pure White. (Trim color – Charleston White)
And then once we move in I’ll change things up as each space is decorated. Many of the open areas – kitchen, living, dining and hallways will most likely remain Pure White (a white with a warm undertone) because I like a balance of bold and neutral. And I tend to use bold patterned rugs and furnishings.
Creating flow from room to room doesn’t have to mean choosing a monochromatic theme or using the same color in every space, unless that’s what feels right for you. You can absolutely create flow using bold colors, allowing each space to feel unique. And using the three simple tips I shared above makes creating flow with bold colors really easy!
*Bonus Tip – Use an Online Color Generator
If you’re still feeling stuck and can’t decided on a paint color collection that feels right for you, there are quite a few online tools that make generating a paint color scheme really simple.
Sherwin Williams offers ColorSnap. And it’s super easy to use. You just upload any photo as inspiration and the tool creates a custom color palette of Sherwin-Williams paint colors. You can even create an account to save your palettes as a reference for future use.
Canva is another easy to use color generating tool that allows you to upload an inspiration image and gives you five colors that all play well with each other. But Canva isn’t associated with a paint company, so you can match the colors to your preferred brand of paint.
Bringing Your Color Scheme to Life
The real test of any wall color happens on the actual walls in your space. And the absolute best way to create the perfect paint color scheme is to buy some paint samples, paint them on the walls and evaluate how they look throughout the day and night.
But the beauty of 1. Describing your vibe 2. Finding your inspiration and 3. Starting with a paint color collection, is that you narrow down your options really quickly.
I can’t wait to see the rooms in our new home come to life with color! I’ll be back to share more soon!
For more paint color inspiration and tips, check out this post about the wall colors I chose and the why behind the decisions for our current home (our sixth house).
And if you’re a DIY’er, here are my favorite painting tools!
Such a great and useful post. When my husband and I bought out first house (we’re now on #5), we instinctively (but not deliberately) worked our entire decor around a wallpaper we fell in love with (and used in our entry/hallway). In our second house, we didn’t do that and everything always felt kind of disjointed. We finally figured out why it’s important to have a starting point and to consider how things will work together. Not that everything should be matchy matchy but everything should feel cohesive. My only exception is bedrooms – especially when you want to give kids a say in their spaces. I am so enjoying all of your new house updates and can’t wait to see how it’s all come together at the end.