How to pick the perfect colour

One of the biggest problems that people have when deciding to get their home re-decorated is picking a colour scheme for the rooms in question.

They go and get all the different colour charts from Dulux, or Crown, or Farrow and Ball, but can’t always decide what to do, and often seek my advice, as a professional in the area.

There are a few things that I always let people know when picking out colours of paint.

1. The lighting in the room, and how much sunlight it gets, will always make the colour look different depending on the time of day, whether the colour looks lighter or darker, it always looks a little different.

2. The colour depicted on the colour chart does not always match the paint entirely and I would recommend getting a tester pot and putting 2 or 3 coats of it on a small un-noticeable part of the wall to help you make up your mind.

3. Choosing deep colours, you should always remember that these make a room look smaller, and darker. They don’t reflect the sunlight that well, and unless you have a super ceiling light scheme, your rooms can end up looking dingy. Also, if you ever chose to paint it back to a light colour, it takes a lot of work, and many coats.

4. Most people know what type of colour they want because they have seen it somewhere. Dulux has a great colour matching system, where you can take anything, a piece of cloth, paper, paint scrapings, and Dulux’s computer can match it perfectly, and produce a good quality paint in that colour.

If you are thinking of getting your home re-decorated and you don’t know what colour to choose, these are some of the things that you need to take into account.