Want to change the paints in your home? This article discusses how to choose the best colours for your home in 2023!
Home renovation is equal parts tiring and rewarding. It can be tiring to work with contractors, have workers go in and out of your house all day, and have your home be a mess. However, seeing your house completely transformed can be very rewarding — it makes all the struggle worth it!
But what do you do when you can’t decide which colour to paint your walls? You consult the internet, of course!
Some people have favourite colours or specific preferences when it comes to painting their homes. Other people want to focus on the tone of the room or the general theme of their home before making a choice. Whatever the case, you don’t have to worry because this article will give you the most useful tips to choose the best colours for your home in 2023!
Make a Moodboard
Creatives all around the world thank whoever came up with the concept of mood boards because they’re extremely useful tools when it comes to explaining concepts via images and colours instead of words.
When you get the idea to renovate your home or freshen up the paints, the first thing you should do is create a mood board. One way to do so is by hopping onto online platforms, such as Pinterest or Canva, and skimming through colour palettes. “Pin” (or save) the images and colours you like. At the end, surf through your pins and find a common pattern. Pick the best ones to form a collage — and there you have it, your very own and highly personalised moodboard!
Doing so will give your thoughts a general direction and also help the interior designers or contractors to get a general idea of what you want to do around your home.
Understand How Light Affects Paint Colour In A Room
Most people don’t understand why some colour doesn’t ‘look right’ in their house, but it likely has to do with the quality of the light in that room. Light can enhance or even transform wall paint, so make sure to consider it when choosing paint for your walls.
The general direction of the natural light, the tone of the light, and what time it hits that specific room — these are all extremely important things to consider when painting a room. Since it can be hard to figure out all the factors, here are some general pointers to choose your wall paint while considering the light.
Choosing Wall Paint For A North-Facing Window
If your room gets light from a northern source, you need to choose warmer tones for your walls, as northern light accentuates any room's cooler tones. So, a general rule of thumb is to avoid cool colours like green, grey, or blue. A great idea would be to go for warmer tones, such as yellow, warm white, or beige, to amplify the light instead of downplaying it.
Choosing Wall Paint For A South-Facing Room
Wall paints and indoor plants both thrive in rooms that face southern light because southern light is bright and warm. While other rooms can be hard to choose wall colours for, that’s not the case with south-facing rooms. Any light tone, such as a cool shade of white or a light blue, can be a great idea for such a room.
If you’re leaning more toward whites, try to choose cooler whites rather than warmer ones, as warm whites tend to look yellow in south-facing rooms.
You can also play around with other colours because this room gets a lot of light throughout the day and can withstand more experimental approaches.
Choosing Wall Paint For An East-Facing Room
East-facing rooms have an interesting relationship with natural light. They tend to see a lot of light during the early hours of the day and have muted light near the end of the day. So, when choosing the colour palette for an east-facing room, make sure to consider when you’ll be using the room.
If it’s during the day, you need to capitalise on the bright morning light and choose a bright, warm colour such as yellowish-green or even yellow. Doing so will accentuate the natural light and give your room a cheerful, airy feel.
If you use the room more toward the end of the day, you need to choose colours that suit the muted afternoon light. Cool shades such as graphite, dark green, or muted blue might be the perfect idea for such a room.
Choosing Wall Paint For A West-Facing Room
West-facing rooms are also a little tricky when it comes to choosing their wall colours because they get cool early morning light and bright afternoon light.
For these rooms, you need to choose intermediate shades that give a bright feeling in the muted, early morning light while balancing the intensely bright light in the afternoon.
A good idea would be to work with light shades of pink or brick. If you’re feeling a little experimental, you can even go for a light grey or beige.
Learn How To Choose The Right Complimentary Colours
To play around with contrast and add a daring touch to your room, you need to work with complementary colours. Complementary colours provide the most powerful contrast to each other because they’re located opposite each other on the colour wheel and amplify the other colour’s qualities.
However, don’t paint two adjacent walls in complementary colours, as that can result in quite a clash. Use one colour in greater amounts to paint an accent wall or the ceiling and use the other colour in more subtle forms, such as for the upholstery or the artwork, to create a visually pleasing pop of colour.
Create A Cohesive Paint Colour Scheme
In some homes, going from one room to another can feel like walking into another dimension because the rooms do not have a cohesive colour scheme. While you do not necessarily need to paint your entire house in the same colour, you do need to use a recurring set of colours to create a cohesive effect in your home.
Start off by choosing the base colour in your paint colour scheme. After that, find lighter or darker shades and complementary colours to create a colour scheme. Once you have a colour scheme, plan how you want to apply it to your house.
You can also use the same neutral colour to paint connecting spaces to create a streamlined effect from one room to another. This works especially well in open-plan spaces.
Choose The Right Accent Colour
The accent colour decides the entire vibe of your room. If you want a moody ambiance for your room, your accent wall could be a stormy grey or a dark blue. If you want a cheerful and bright look for a room, such as a kitchen, work with a colour that exudes that energy, such as baby blue or yellow.
Make sure to accent the wall that’s the most noticeable when you enter a room. However, a great rule of thumb to follow when painting your house is the 60-30-10 rule, where 60% of the paint in a room is the neutral tone, 30% is for a bolder companion colour, and 10% of the room should be dedicated to the accent colour.
What Else?
All in all, the process of repainting your home should be dynamic and fun and definitely not a stressful experience. Since home renovation can be an expensive endeavour, you can bring an experienced interior designer on board to help you with the trickier parts of picking colours for your walls, such as creating a cohesive colour scheme, choosing an accent wall colour, and differentiating between warm and cool tones.
So, are you ready to add a new dimension to your home? Start creating a mood board for those wall colours!