Paint is the most
inexpensive way to transform a room from drab to fabulous,
but for many homeowners selecting the right colors seems an
intimidating task not easily achieved by amateurs.
The best way to begin is to let fabric lead the way. Choose
furniture and drapery that you love from the start and then
go from there. Fabric provides inspiration for a room's
color scheme, but it's also a more prudent starting point
because paint is much easier to change than furniture and
window treatments.
The journey begins when you take a fabric swatch to the
paint store and try to find paint chips that coordinate with
the colors present in your fabric sample. You don't have to
find a perfect match - choosing a wall color that is
slightly lighter or darker than the color in the fabric can
make a room flow.
For instance, a darker wall color makes lighter fabric stand
out in a room, resulting in a dramatic-looking room.
Similarly, darker walls contrasted against light curtains
make the windows of a room more noticeable. A perfect match
has a different effect - it creates a consistent harmony of
color that makes a sofa or other piece of furniture more
striking.
If you really want to find a perfect match, new technology
has made it possible to identify the exact colors in a piece
of fabric and reproduce them in a paint color. This is all
done with a spectrometer, but it only works on solid fabric.
When shopping at a paint store, however, realize that paint
chips don't show you exactly how the color will appear on
the walls. Before deciding on any one color, test it on a
small section of the wall and view it in both daylight and
at night.
Perhaps you plan to paint in neutral tones? In this case,
test a shade that's a few shades darker than the one you
prefer. In large spaces particularly, stronger neutrals will
give a room more of the impact you're looking for.
When selecting a paint color, it's also important to take
into account the texture of your walls. Stucco and brick
surfaces, for example, are very rough and reflect less light
than smooth walls - it's important to remember that colors
painted on rough walls appear darker than when they are
painted on a smooth surface. |
