Before You Start
Choosing Paint Colors

When it comes time for choosing paint colors for your interior home painting project, there are 3 things you need to consider:

1. Personal Color Preferences

Picking paint colors for your home should be a personal decision.

Forget all the latest paint color trends and interior decorators' advice - they don't matter as much as your personal likes and dislikes.

First and foremost, you must love the color, because you are the one who will have to live with it 24/7. Please yourself first, and don't worry too much about impressing your guests. You are a unique individual, so choose interior paint colors that will reflect that.

2. Existing Decor Colors

Unless you are completely redecorating a room and starting from scratch, your existing decor should play a big part in the process of choosing a paint color for the walls.

That means that most of the time you can't just "copy and paste" the color you saw in somebody else's home, because what looked so great and sophisticated in a magazine or in your friend's house, might end up looking funny and odd in yours.
You can "borrow" color ideas, but you'll need to tweak the color and adapt it for your situation.

3. Impact of Color

The psychology of color is another important aspect to take into account when choosing paint colors for your home. It's one thing to like the color on a tiny chip, but it's a totally different experience to be surrounded by it.

Color can have a very strong impact on our mood, energy levels, appetite, sleep patterns and concentration, that's why you need to make sure that you choose paint colors that not only will you enjoy and not get tired of for at least a couple of years, but also the ones that will not conflict with the purpose of the room in which they will be used.

For example:

RED excites the senses, stimulates appetite, speeds up heart rate, raises energy level and blood pressure.

BLUE promotes relaxation, suppresses appetite, lowers blood pressure and body temperature.

GREEN is the easiest color on the eyes, it produces a calming and grounding effect.

YELLOW is the most fatiguing color on the eyes, it stimulates the nerves and can create feelings of anger.

ORANGE is a very energetic color - it combines the characteristics of red and yellow.

PURPLE is similar to blue in its impact, and in addition it encourages creativity.

The higher the intensity of a chosen color, the more pronounced the effect. By choosing different shades of the same color, you can control to what extent it will affect your emotional and physiological states.

Generally, most of us will react in a similar way to the same colors, but certain memories can cause you to love or hate a particular hue. Plus, within each color family there are extremes that can't be linked with the same emotion or mood (pure red can irritate, but soft pink is calming).

So when choosing paint colors for your home, don't rely exclusively on color meanings and properties - instead, listen to your gut feeling and observe your own reaction.