What to keep in mind when Painting the Rooms in your House?

Your house is the place you spend your life in. You live in it, you make memories in it, you invite the people you care about in it. It more or less is a living testimony to the life you have spent. Thus your house should be nothing less than a reflection of your personality and nothing screams who you really are more than the colours you choose to paint your house in.

Thus if your style includes loud and exuberant colours and bold hues, do not at all be reluctant in using such colours to paint your rooms in. Even if, in your opinion, that colour would not go well with the age and architecture of your home.

From the blue-painted hearth of a Colonial Revival to the deep red parlour walls of a Queen Anne to the teal accents of a Craftsman bungalow, there has always been a place for colour inside the house. Even in today's open-plan homes, where kitchens, living rooms, and dining rooms are often one large space, colour is used to help define interiors and create focal points in relatively featureless rooms. The trick, of course, is figuring out which colours to use and where to put them.

Choose Colour based on Architecture.

Among the many methods to choose the hue of colour that could completely transform the room in the most effective of ways is to play up its architectural features. Moulding, mantels, built-in bookcases, arched doorways, wainscot, windows, and doors all offer an opportunity to add another layer of interest to coloured walls.

- If you going to add a little bit of shady work.....

To bring attention to detail you can always add a subtle shift in colour by painting the moulding one shade lighter or darker than the wall it is adjacent to. Painting a metallic glaze right on top of an existing painted element, like a ceiling medallion, is another way to draw attention.  You can also achieve the same effect by adding a copper or bronze finish. It is very translucent and gives a nice shimmer that enhances the architectural feature of the space it is being used on.

- If you are going to go bold....

For a bolder approach, try using two different colours in the same room. Like, you can always paint a built-in bookcase or niche a shade of green in a room with blue walls, which will highlight the items on the bookcase or inside the recessed area.

- If you are going to use the same colour....

Of course, architectural elements can also provide continuity throughout a house if they are painted the same colour in every room. Just make sure you use different hues of the same colour to compliment the lightening of the room. Starting in the Federal period and continuing today, white and off-white have been the traditional choice for moulding, windows, and doors so you can always choose that, paired with a bold choice for trimming if you’d like.

- If you want a room with a view, sheesh.. my bad! A Wainscot…

A room containing wainscot provides a good opportunity for a contrast between light and dark. A dark wainscot below a bright wall will draw attention to the upper walls, while a bright white wainscot next to a coloured wall will focus the eye on the wainscot.

You can also use paint to create the effect of wainscot where it doesn't exist by covering the bottom third of the wall in one colour and the upper walls in another; then place a piece of flat moulding along the intersection and paint it the colour of the lower wall to reinforce the wainscot look.

I hope all that makes sense to you as it does to me.

- If “accent” is your cup of tea...

To add a little drama to a plain featureless room you can always add a little oomph by painting an “accent wall” in a vivid and gorgeous hue. If drama is your goal, you might rethink the entire notion of painting a wall from corner to corner and you'll create an architectural emphasis where one doesn't exist.

- If you are going to go for an all-around amazing look...

When moving around the room in a clockwise direction, try painting a third of one wall and two thirds of the adjacent wall, wrapping the corner in colour. Then paint the last one eighth of the second wall and three quarters of its adjacent wall, covering that corner.

Another bold play: Take a big wall and, working in from both corners, paint it almost to the centre, leaving an 18- to 20-inch vertical line of white space, and hang artwork down the centre.

- If you have special plans for the ceiling...

Consider the ceiling the fifth wall of a room. Though sticking to "ceiling white" generally makes a space feel airy, a similar effect can be achieved by painting the ceiling a lighter shade of the wall colour. Like if the walls are painted green, you can choose to paint the ceiling a very sunny shade of yellow instead of the boring old white.

Just take the paint sample card that has your wall colour as the middle choice, and then go one or two choices lighter for the ceiling colour. The result will be a room that appears larger, because the contrast between wall colour and ceiling colour has been softened. In a small room, such as a bathroom, the ceiling can even be painted the same colour as the walls to make it look bigger.

- If you want a cozy and intimate living space...

Of course, sometimes lowering the ceiling visually creates a welcome feeling of enclosure. For example if you have a dining room painted in reds and white, you can paint the ceiling red instead of the very obvious choice of white which will make the room seem more cozy and intimate-feeling than it was.

Similarly, in a house that has ceilings just 8 or 9 feet high, painting a bedroom ceiling a pale robin's egg blue, for instance, would be a way to create a similar, soothing effect.

Choosing Colours You Can Live With

An interior designer or those of us working as a professional handymen can always advice you on what colour will make a certain room pop or what would be the best choice when it comes to painting your living space.

But the thing is, ultimately, it is your home. You are going to live in that space not us thus whatever might the best thing we’d tell you about, it would be the best thing in OUR opinion which might not always match with yours.

- How to choose the ideal colours for your living space...

If you are still unsure about what to do, you should not solely rely or our advice or the advice of that interior designer you have hired. Go back to the basics. There might be a thousand of paint chips at your local hardware store to confuse you but there are only seven colours in the paint spectrum.

With that in mind there is also a very good way with which you can create a colour scheme for your living space very easily. Start by selecting your favourite objects in your living space. It can be your favourite scarf or tie, a sofa cushion cover or a dress – anything at all that reminds you of home or has an emotional significance in your eyes. It can even be the ribbons you put on your dolls when you were little – and take that object with you when you go to the store to find a paint colour.

Once there, look through the colour sample book and choose three sample strips in those colours. These three strips will lead to an easy array of 15 to 20 colours you can choose from (as every strip at least contains six colours).

Now amongst these six or eight shades, choose three of these colours to go onto your walls while the rest will serve well as furniture covers and curtains. Finally choose one colour (or the fourth colour if you may) to go on as the “accent” colour in that particular living space.

Finally, add a little splash of that colour in every room of the house to give the colour used all over your house a harmonious flow.

- How to get over the paralyzed feeling you get in a paint store...

Once at the paint store, if you are still sweating at gills because you are still unsure of what you need to buy, well, fret not. We have a solution for you.

Take a look at the booklet containing the sample colours. If you choose, for example, the blue (and its shades) colour strip from the booklet, have a look the darkest colour i.e. the one at the bottom.

Can you live with that? Can you see yourself tolerating that colour on your living room’s wall for the better part of the next decade? If yes than you can probably live with the colour in the middle as well as the one of the top.

That sounds like a mighty easy way to start with.

- Done with the colour? Now let’s play with it...

Once you have your colours in hand, consider the finish you'll be using. Though today's flat paints have increased stain resistance, conventional wisdom has long held that a satin (also called eggshell) finish is best for walls because it is scrub-able and doesn't draw attention to imperfections.

Semi-gloss and high-gloss finishes, it was thought, were best left to the trim, where they could accent the curves of a moulding profile or the panels of a door.

Today, however, finishes are also being used to create visual effects on the entire wall. Paint one wall in a flat or satin finish and the adjacent wall in a semi-gloss, both in the same colour. In this order when the light hits the walls, it creates a corduroy or velvet effect.

Similarly, you can paint the walls flat and the ceiling semi-gloss to achieve a matte and sheen contrast. (The ceiling will feel higher the more light-reflective it is.) Keep in mind that the higher the gloss, the more sheen and the more attention you draw to the surface.

Used strategically, colour and gloss together can emphasize your interior's best assets and if you need some help with the painting part of the job, the best house painting service in the entire city of London, UK might just be right around the corner, figuratively speaking.