When I bought my first home, I was really excited about getting to paint the walls ANY color other than the standard ‘apartment’ white I had been living with for years. My dream was a Tuscan vineyard themed kitchen. I envisioned textured walls, rustic looking fixtures, lots of warm colors. From apartment to apartment, I carried my Tuscan themed kitchen accessories. All these aged copper antiques looked cheap against the white painted walls. Finally they get a backdrop! I thought the process of choosing paint colors would be easy. I like to think of myself as an expressive, creative person, so how hard could choosing paint colors be? I already had a vision. I even had a collection of pictures torn out of magazines. I did find a few ideas online, but I didn’t know you could actually choose paint colors online; so off to the store I went.
Have you ever stood in front of the paint sample chart in a store? Well, there had to be at least a zillion different options for choosing paint colors. (I may be a little off in my numbers.) Each brand has its own display. Who would have thought choosing paint colors would be such an ordeal? I was faced with so many options, Behr Interior Pains, Glidden Interior Paints, Sherwin Williams Interior Paint. I began to feel slightly intimidated by the process of choosing paint colors, so I grabbed a bunch of each brands’ color cards. A big thick stack of yellow paint sample cards, another stack of rustic looking reds, tans, browns, well, really any and every available interior paint color card. I also grabbed some faux painting technique brochures. My pocket book was heavy when I left the home improvement store without making a purchase. This increased my anxiety. I felt guilty, as if I had taken too many samples.
I went home and sorted through my huge collection of paint color samples. I laid them out on the living room floor. I realized soon the vision I had, was really a two or three color, faux painting process. But which paint colors corresponded? I also realized I couldn’t have a rustic looking kitchen that opened up into the living room that was painted purple, just because I liked it on the card. My house would have looked like a box of crayons. This was not going to be easy. I needed help!
I went around taping the paint color samples to the walls in each room. I got this snippet of advice online. Every morning I would wake up, put on a pot of coffee, and wonder what the heck I was thinking when I taped that now ugly looking brown (or other color) paint sample card to the wall. Finally when looking through my paint color cards and brochures, I noticed that the different paint brands had websites, and you could get expert advice in choosing paint colors online!
This is where my stress ended. I went online and visited the websites of each brand of paint; there I found interactive paint choosing color guides. This was so easy! I wish I would have known that you could choose interior paint colors online earlier! This came in handy for getting a ‘flow’ going with the colors I wanted to use from room to room. It was possible to have a rustic Tuscany themed kitchen and have the ‘purple’ paint color in the living room; it just had to be the right shade of paint.
Sherwin Williams offers a free online interior paint Color Visualizer. They have over 1400 color options, and coordinated color schemes. Sherwin Williams has a whole section of their website devoted to their line of Sherwin Williams Interior Paints. They offer a variety of services to help with choosing interior paint colors, Color 101, Color To Go, Color Mix 2007, and the Color Prime System.
Behr.com offers its free Explore Color service. The Color Smart system is free, but Behr also has a service for $4.95 a year, called Paint your Place. This is a unique service that allows you to upload photos of your rooms, to see how the paint colors look on your walls! Behr Interior Paints also offers samples.
Glidden.Com also offers a website for choosing interior paint colors online. The have a variety of color choosing options, tips and articles. To aid in choosing paint colors they have The Color Palette, Color Consultant, Color Visualizer, The Color Test, and Team Colors.
Being able to choose paint colors online for the interior of you home makes the whole process so much easier. So sit back, grab a cup of coffee and see what you can dream up, and bring into reality!
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