How to Pick the Right Paint Color (For You)

I know this is coming late, but I wasn't feeling the best this week. Still feeling groggy and tired, but I wanted to get this post done just in case any of you are thinking about painting this weekend.

My pizza pudgy pie!

But first, what an amazing weekend the Rhodes- Myers had. Friday night we got together with some friends and their kids and had a pudgy pie buffet.

Our friends who graciously hosted the pudgy pie party.

I'm talking pizza and grilled cheese pudgy pies.  All I can say is yum! After we ate the pudgy pies, six of us took off for the Haunted Cave here in Fort Fun and the other four went to hang out somewhere a little less scary at Crazy Pins.

This guy burned his hair right after this photo was taken. Don't worry, he was fine.

None of our group had never been to the Haunted Cave before it was definitely worth it. There was a room where we got shocked, a spinning room and of course plenty of people following us and getting in our faces. I'd totally go again. After we got out of the cave there were a group of people entertaining the crowd with things set on fire, like hula hoops and balls on strings. 

Oh and spitting fire. Which is dangerous, do not try this!
I'm obsessed with taking these types of photos. 

After, we all met back at our friend's house we continued with the pudgy pie buffet, but this time it was dessert. Blueberry, cherry, apples and apple- cheddar all with cinnamon and cinnamon brown sugar bread. Definitely a good way to end the night.   

Sunday was even more fun and busy. We had Christmas with my grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles. Yes, you read that right, we had Christmas in October! My grandparents live in Florida half the year so we've been doing Christmas in October for awhile. Heck the first time we did it, it was actually Halloween. Christmas on Halloween was strange, or would it be Christoween or Hallomas? Well, whatever it's called, we had fun. Santa even showed up and asked the kids what they wanted for Christmas. 

I love this photo! Santa just left and the kids were looking to see how he was getting out of there!

My sweet daughter, whenever we go there she has to ride this bike.

Alright, enough about my amazing weekend.  Let's talk about paint, or more specifically how to pick the right paint color for you. I love color and love to paint but it can be hard sometimes finding the color your envisioning. All sorts of things come into play when your working with color on the walls, like light and shadows, time of day, tone of color and your surroundings. Oh, and if your going to use primer or not.

I'm not going to get into too much color theory, just what applies.Take for example you think you want a certain color and you go to the store and get the sample card. You think it's exactly what you want until you put it on the walls and realize it's not even close. That's because there are different tones of color. Basically cool and warm tones. Check out this door I messed up. I had used this color on my bead cabinet in another room and it looked great. Well, in this room it looked like a bright neon mess that was wholly unacceptable for the room (and my eyes). This is what happens when you mix a warm yellow and a cool yellow. Now, when you're designing a room you want to bring in cool and warm tones together, just not on the walls (and door). For me part of the driving factor of picking out the color of the room I just painted was I wanted it to be a warm neutral because everything in the room is a cool color. I wanted to balance it out.

This is just ridiculous! The door is white right now, until I can figure out what color to paint it. 

This is a good time to talk about living with a room first before you paint. For this room I had everything done before I even thought about my paint colors for the walls. I had picked out the fabric for the curtains first. When the fabric came in I picked the paint for the two dressers and the one cabinet, then came the trim. Not until all this was done did I even start to think about the paint for the walls.

Yep, the walls were mint green.

Another thing to think about is what will be surrounding the paint, like trim, is it light or dark? When my trim in the room was dark, the paint colors appeared really light. When I painted the trim white all the colors that I thought were really light appeared dark. Our eyes read different colors with the surroundings. This is why I tested seven different colors!

To prime or not. In my craft room, I thought I wouldn't have to prime because the mint shade was so light. Nope, I tried painting it without and the paint I was using looked pink. It was a lovely pink shade to use in a baby's room, but not what I was going for. I also screwed up another paint job when I didn't use a tinted primer here.

This is the color I ended up going with.

Wow, I almost forgot to talk about paint finish! The shinier the finish the easier it is to clean. Most professional painters will recommend high gloss in rooms with high traffic all the way down to a matte finish where you won't have people touching it. My daughter is 11 and doesn't have the sticky hands of a child and is way past the stage of coloring on the walls so I went with a matte finish. I wanted zero sheen because the furniture I painted was all in high gloss finish. I didn't want us to walk into the room and be blinded by the shine! 

All of these finishes are satin. This was taken with the flash on.

You can make it really easy, here's what it comes down to, buy sample paints. They are not very expensive and are well worth your time. I've seen on some blogs where people recommend buying poster board, painting it and then hanging it on your walls. That way you can see how the paint reacts to different times of day. I really like this idea, but I've never tried it. I just prime the walls then use my sample paint on top of it.

Flash from the camera off. 

The color that I finally chose was color matched at Lowe's. I was going for a Greige, that would change colors nicely throughout the day. By the way they can color match other company's paint colors, they actually have the colors in their database. So far I've color matched Glidden and Sherwin Williams. I haven't tried to see if they could match any off the Farrow and Ball's colors, but that's on my list to try eventually.

I am so in love with the way this paint color turned out. It's not too dark and it changes from beige to gray and it's creamy and warm. Pretty much exactly what I wanted. The color is Loggia from Sherwin Williams color matched to Valspar paint.

Our cat likes it too!

If I can leave you with one thought, don't be intimidated by the paint! The test pots from Lowe's are around $2. Yes, I know that can add up, but sometimes you get lucky and you end up liking the first or second one you tried. It's so much easier to test first, than being stuck with a $35 gallon of paint that you don't even want to look at.

How about you, do you have any tricks you use for picking paint colors? Did I leave anything out? Have you found colors you love and some not so much? Have you found that some colors look good in one room and not the next (like my door)? 

Jump in to the conversation and post your comments below!