Choosing Paint Colors | It's Great To Be Home

Picking paint colors for the exterior of your home can seem like an overwhelming task. It seems like there’s such pressure to get the color scheme right the first time – after all, you want your family (and your guests) to love the way that your home looks, and repainting the whole house after an unfortunate paint job is the last thing you want to have to do!

Luckily, picking the perfect exterior paint colors is actually pretty easy – really easy, in fact. Just by following the little cheat-sheet guide to picking paint colors that I’m about to fill you in on, we were able to choose a paint combination that took our flip from this:

to this:

Wanna hear how we did it?

1. Assess the situation. Before you even think about cracking open a paint can, there are a few characteristics about your home that you need to take into account. Here are just a few factors that you need to think about:

~ What color is your roof? If your roof leans more towards brown than gray, then you know that you will need exterior paint colors that are in the brown family as opposed to the gray family.

~ What is the style of your home? The color schemes that your house can pull off will vary a great deal depending upon whether your home is a rancher, for example, versus a Victorian.

~ Are there any exterior features that you don’t want to paint? For example, if you have a fabulous wooden front door that is stained a deep chocolate brown, then you know that your color scheme will be designed around that chocolate front door. Or you might have a flagstone walkway in a deep slate blue that will have to be incorporated into your color palette.

~ How much natural sunlight does your home get? If you want your home to feel bright and airy in the middle of a dark forest, then you need to go for lighter tones, while a home in the middle of a field can get away with much deeper shades without feeling dark and creepy.

2. Jump in your ride. Yes, that’s right – you’re about to take a tour of the neighborhood – or the county, if necessary. While some people swear by paint chips or online photographs, seeing color palettes in person on houses similar to your own is really the ultimate way to find the perfect color combo for your own home. You can see firsthand what works (and what doesn’t), and find surprising and inspired color combinations that you never would have thought of on your own. All you need to do is find the section of town where the homes have architecture similar to your own house and inspect with an eagle eye the colors that other homeowners have chosen to use – and keep in mind all of the factors about your own home that you need to take into account.

3. Ring the doorbell. Once you find a house with a fabulous color palette, the only way you can flawlessly achieve that look on your own is to use the exact same paint colors. If you try to just visually match the paint colors with paint chips, chances are that you’ll wind up with paint colors that are just a little off – definitely not what you’re going for. So, you know what that means!! It’s time to ring the doorbell of that cute little house and ask the homeowners what paint colors they used – or, if you’re feeling a little shy, feel free to leave a note in their mailbox with your phone number. Most people feel flattered that you love their house so much that you want to “borrow” their paint scheme – here’s the house that the color palette on our flip was inspired by:

So that’s all there is to it! Do you guys have any tips for picking paint colors that we need to know about? What about winning color combos? We’d love to hear it!

Hey there all you paint-happy people! After our renovation was featured last weekend on Young House Love I got bunches of emails from you guys asking about the paint colors that we used, so I decided it’s high time for me to finally spill the paint-covered beans. So hold onto your paint stirrers ’cause here we go!

1. What brand of paint did you use? Our original plan was to use Behr from Home Depot, simply because that’s what we’re familiar with (and there’s a Home Depot about an inch from our house). But it turns out that painters in our area recommend Pittsburgh Paints like it’s going out of style, so we went ahead and gave them a whirl. Turned out pretty darn well, if you ask me!! The coverage is awesome (not too runny or thin) and they have tons of awesome shades to pick from. (My personal favorite is Toasted Almond, but more about that later).

2. Did you use all latex, or did you use some oil-based? We actually used a little bit of both. All of our drywall was painted with a flat latex paint – flat because I typically think shiny walls are a big no-no and latex because the cleanup is so easy, the paint dries in a snap, fumes aren’t as bad and drywall typically doesn’t need the tough finish that oil-based paints provide. However, all of the wood surfaces in our house were painted with an oil-based semi-gloss paint that is super-tough and dries super-smooth. When you’re dealing with wood surfaces like trim or cabinets that are really smooth, you want a paint like an oil-based that will dry without any streaks or brush marks or else all of your hard work will wind up looking kinda funky. Oil-based paint also adheres really well to wood so it helps prevent all of your nice woodwork from getting scratched and nicked over time. And we used a semi-gloss because I love it when wood has a subtle sheen – it makes your woodwork stand out and get the appreciation it deserves.

We wound up going through tons of that oil-based semi-gloss on all of our molding, doors and cabinetry throughout the house, as well as the wood paneling in our den:

3. How did you decide what paint colors to use? Ahh, picking paint colors. I was tempted to fib a little and tell you that it was easy breezy picking colors for this house, but let me tell you – it wasn’t. At first I was all gung-ho about the thought of picking out colors for each room – I got out our trusty paint deck each night after work, picked out colors and discussed the pros and cons of each color with my husband. We had the entire house picked out in no time. And then it came time to actually commit to the colors. And I freaked out.

How was I supposed to pick out paint colors for an entire house when I couldn’t even look at our furniture or bedding to figure out which paint colors would look best with our stuff?? That’s right, all of our stuff was still in storage when it came time to paint – talk about scary! So after I freaked out a little, my mom and I went to the paint store and picked up a whole bunch of those little pint samples of the paint colors that we liked and went to town – I swear, our house must have looked like a disgruntled painters’ union ran through it. But in the end, that’s the best thing we could have done – spending just a little money on those samples saved us a ton of money in the long run because as great as those paint decks are they can never really tell you exactly what the paint is going to look like on your wall. So here’s my earth-shattering tip that we all know but try to ignore – try it out before you buy it! And as an added bonus, you’ll have all of those little paint samples left over for touch-ups or DIY projects down the road.

4. What colors did you use? After all the drama of picking the paint colors was over, we wound up with paint colors that we absolutely love. Some of them I know I’ll use in my house forever. Here’s the list:

LOCATION PAINT COLOR/TYPE

Trim, cabinets, den walls Atrium White, 523-1 (oil; semi-gloss)

Office Balsam, 510-4 (flat latex)

Entry Toasted Almond, 414-3 (flat latex)

Dining Toasted Almond, 414-3 (flat latex)

Kitchen Toasted Almond, 414-3 (flat latex)

Craft Room Graceful, 452-3 (flat latex)

Laundry Bathroom Subtle Blue, 452-1 (flat latex)

Laundry Subtle Blue, 452-1 (flat latex)

Hallway Antique White, 516-2 (flat latex)

Second Bedroom Tradewinds, 453-2 (flat latex)

Third Bedroom Antique White, 516-2 (flat latex)

Jack & Jill Bathroom White Sage, 410-2 (flat latex)

Master Bedroom Toasted Almond, 414-3 (flat latex)

Master Bathroom Toasted Almond, 414-3 (flat latex)

All closets Ceiling White

All ceilings (except den) Ceiling White

Den ceiling Atrium White, 523-1 (flat latex)

Hall Bathroom Felicity, 453-3 (flat latex)

You can see most of the colors in action right here (and the rest are coming soon). But for those of you that need instant gratification, here’s a quick visual breakdown of our colors:

[Keep in mind that these colors are only as accurate as your computer monitor. On my screen, the Jack 'n Jill bath looks blue when it's actually green. Weird.]

Here’s a little floorplan of our house so you can visualize where the colors go:

5. Do you like all of the colors that you picked? Yes. Toasted Almond and Atrium White are my total faves – they are glorious. However, if I were to do it all over again I would not pick so many shades of the same colors. At the time I thought that it was important for each room to be slightly different so that the house wouldn’t feel monotonous, but in the end I basically wound up picking the same colors over and over again. It turns out that I like blues, greens and tans and they all work in the house so there was no point in me trying to reinvent the wheel for each room – next time I will just pick a shade of each color and stick with it.

So that’s it! The paint colors for my whole house in a nutshell. What do you think? Has picking paint colors driven you batty? Any tips for picking the perfect shade??

Check out Apartment Therapy for a few tips on choosing paint colors for your home from Farrow & Ball.