Colors to Paint a Room

The colors to paint a room are limited only by your imagination. Color awakens one's senses in either a pleasant or unpleasant way, and we all feel differently about individual colors, and coordinating groups of colors known as color schemes or palettes.

Color has immense power, and the colors we paint our homes have a psychological impact on our lives, afecting our perception of space and influencing our mental state.

Basic Guidelines for Colors To Paint a Room

Nothing can transform a room like paint, and with so many colors available to paint a room, understanding some basic color design guidelines ensures you will make the best choice for your home.

Optical Illusions and Physical Realities of Color

A room that was once dull and boring magically becomes an awe inspiring living space when spruced up with a fresh coat of paint. There is nothing you can do to rejuvenate your home that is as fast, easy, and inexpensive as painting. Whether you paint a few rooms or the whole house, adding new color to your home can enhance your quality of life. There are some interesting optical illusions and physical realities of color that are useful to know when choosing paint colors.

Colors are considered either warm or cool hues and each color group has the ability to change our perception of space in a variety of ways. Warm colors are generally brighter and stronger than cool colors and known as advancing colors as they jump out and meet the eye. Paint a room that is not very well lit in warm colors such as red, yellow, or orange and watch it come alive!

Warm colors sizzle in cold rooms that get limited or no sunlight and will actually make the room feel physically hotter. Since warm colors reflect light, the walls emit that heat into the room. Warm colors when used in darker tones will make a room appear smaller. This is a good choice for a particularly large room you are trying to make more intimate and cozy like a 500 square foot great room.

Cool colors have the opposite effect of warm colors. The walls appear to recede when painted a cool color, expanding the space and making the room feel and look larger. Cool colors like blue, violet, and green absorb light rather than reflect it, making the room feel physically cooler. Cool colors make the color seem to stand back and are a good choice for a room that soaks up a lot of sun and gets hot during the day.

Other rooms to use cool colors or white and neutrals would be in uncomfortably small rooms like laundry rooms, tiny bedrooms, and petite bathrooms which will become visually more spacious when painted a cool color.

Color Inspiration

The paint industry is market driven and paint manufacturers must stay on the cutting edge of interior design to meet the needs of enlightened consumers. Decorating and design shows are epidemic and many people have become savvy decorators just by tuning in to their favorite design program every week.

Major players in the paint industry introduce new color palette collections every season or at least once a year. Through creative marketing using designer's advice and tomes of information about color and how it can be used, they vie for the lion's share of this vast market and it benefits all of us with a multitude of choices and price points, from designer paint like Ralph Lauren to your neighborhood hardware store brand.

Getting inspired is the first step and the following sources of color inspiration will have you feeling like an interior decorating pro:

• • Browse paint brand websites using the virtual color design tools. It's a fun and easy way to explore color possibilities. Virtual color palettes are also a great way to get a feel for the latest trends in color. However, keep in mind the colors you choose should have more to do with your own personal taste and lifestyle than trends. The following websites offer a host of exciting tools to see how different color palettes look in every room in your house:

• • Behr offers premium quality paint and a stunning portfolio of room designs in different color collections.
  • Benjamin Moore is another premium paint brand considered by many designers to be one of the best available.

• Nature and its remarkably rich kaleidoscope of color is perhaps the best source of inspiration. Nature is a veritable showcase of color, its flora and fauna and daily phenomenal events are alive with intricate color nuances beyond imagination. Nature's exciting array of color, from the fiery glow of a golden sunset to the soothing translucent blue ocean, and all the magnificent colors displayed in the animal and plant kingdom, are invaluable resources when creating a color scheme for your home.
• Color chips and paint decks and fans have come a long way. Many of the paint brands offer much larger paint swatches so you get a better idea of how the whole room will look when you are finished painting.
• Interior decorating magazines have always been a primary resource for choosing colors and there is a wide variety available. From Architectural Digest to House and Home and Better Homes and Gardens, you are sure to find a wealth of color inspiration within their glossy pages.
• Television decorating shows have become classic these days. The proliferation of these do-it-yourself design programs is wonderful for those of us who live to decorate. The ideas gleaned from watching a few of these programs will be enough to have you dreaming in color and anticipating a glorious day shopping for paint.

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