“There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.” – Pablo Picasso, famous artist

Rejuvenating your home does not take a fortune nor does it necessarily require extensive renovations. There are many ways to breathe life into your home and one of them is by giving it a fresh coat of paint.

While painting your home is not a complicated process, choosing the right colour combination may be a daunting task given that the market is filled plenty of choices of paint. Visiting the closest hardware store and looking at the rows of paint on the shelves might feel a little overwhelming for the unprepared, which is why us folks at iProperty.com is here to help with our painting colour guide.

Understanding the basics

There may be plenty of paint colour choices in the market but the fundamentals of choosing colour is really simple when you understand how colours work for your home.  Here are some of the basics:

Warm colours tend to incite excitement and energy. Used in a room, warm colours command attention and have stimulating effects. To the extreme, incorrect use of warm colours can cause sleeplessness and overexcitement in places where one should instead be relaxing. Therefore, warm colours should be used with care when painting your home. Warm colours, like red, can be used for dramatic accents maybe on a feature wall in the living hall.

Warm colours are ‘hot’ colours like red, orange and yellow or its many variations from the same side of its spectrum (refer to the colour wheel). As warm colours tend to invoke action and thought, they tend to work best in places like the kitchen, living and dining hall. Warm colours can also be creatively used in the study or work areas in the home especially applicable for small offices home offices (SOHO).

If excitement is used to describe the feeling that warm colours give, then the word calming can best be used to describe the feeling that cool colours present. Cool colours give out a cooling and soothing feeling to the places where the colours are used.

Examples of cool colours are shades of blue, green and purple. Cool colours should be used in relaxation areas of the home for example the bedroom, bathroom and the study. Pastel shades of lavender and green also have soothing effects on the mind.

We can make rooms look bigger and hallways longer than they really are through the clever use of colours. Darker hues will make rooms look smaller and cosier while lighter colours will make rooms appear larger.

Painting two walls located opposite one another a dark colour will make it seem narrower but at the same time longer. If two light colours are used instead, it will make it look wider.

It is also always better to have the floor colour a darker tone than the walls to make it appear grounded. This sets a foundation to the room and gives an allusion of security.

Lighter colours reflect light better than dark colours. Therefore, more light might be needed in rooms that use dark colour schemes. Although darker colours will make a room look smaller, some rooms may benefit from darker colours like home theatre rooms where the focus will primarily be on the entertainment and not the room.

White, black, grey, beige and sometimes brown are considered as neutral colours and are generally deemed as ‘safe’ colours for every room and even the exteriors of the property. When used together, neutral colours easily complement one another. Neutral colours, however, are generally unexciting and may even look formal.

Generally, there are few basic colours but many variations of them with different hues. It is advisable that before you start buying litres and litres of paint, you might want to get some of the colour samples from paint manufacturers, put it on the area you want to paint and then start visualising.

Paint manufacturers also usually have colour fans where their menu of colours are organised in groups. These can be useful when it comes to matching colours as you can spread out the sample so that you could visually compare the colours. This colour menu is also helpful for you to visualise what paint manufacturers actually mean with paint names like ‘Flamingo Pink’ and ‘Shrimp Blush’.

It is easy to get carried away with house colours but when it comes to choosing an exterior colour, remember that you might want to harmonise the colour of the walls with the colour of the roof. They do not need to match, but the colours should complement one another unless you are an understudy of the works of Antoni Gaudi.

Depending on the area that you live in, there may also be limitations to the colours you can choose to paint exterior walls. Your local town council may have guidelines on this, especially so for designated heritage sites. It is better to check first to avoid disappointment.

Colour may appear richer or washed out when light in artificial light. So it may be wise to pay attention to the types of lighting that you use or plan to use for your property.

Rooms are usually themed according to their function and the choice of colour is one of the factors. An entertainment room can benefit from bright, warm colours to reflect the activities that goes one there like electronic gaming. Red and orange can denote excitement and engagement.

Meanwhile, bathrooms can appear more spa-like sensual using blue hues simulating the soothing seas or wide-open skies. Zen-like spaces may have better effect when monotones are used rather than a having a psychedelic mix of colours.

Your choice of furniture also plays a role in matching the colour theme for the rooms. Antique or classic furnishing, for example, might benefit better from neutral coloured walls rather than bright flaming red ones.

Getting extra help

Browsing home interior magazines for colour ideas can help you decide on a colour scheme for your home. Alternatively, you can browse interior design websites for concepts to build your own foundation on.

Do note that interior designers are more than likely to introduce trendy colours for your home and their opinions might not be without basis. After all, rejuvenating your home would also mean keeping it fresh, and there is nothing really fresher than the in-fashion.

The only disadvantage of keeping in-trend is that like fashion, they do go out of style only to make way for the new. Thankfully however, paint, unlike furnishing, is not as difficult to change and putting on fresh coats of paint from time to time does have its own technical benefits, a subject we will touch on in the near future.