Picking a new color for a part of your home or outdoor living space can be a tricky business. Your home and how you decorate it vividly reflect who you are as a person, and certain colors can influence the way you feel — even impact your mood.
Painting a room is a great pick-me-up without a lot of cost, and (hopefully) not too much mess. Splashing a new color up on your walls is a low-stakes project. It doesn’t take too long to do (about a weekend, depending on the size of your room), and the supplies are relatively low-cost and easy-to-use.
When you opt to paint a new color in a room or an outside accent wall, you need to take into consideration the other colors of your rooms, the overall theme and the latest trends. There’s also a paint’s finish to consider.
Here are some tips and tricks, as well as the latest painting trends, according to some of the biggest influencers in interior design and painting.
How to Choose a Paint Color
The color of a room can energize its inhabitants or calm their energies, according to the hue. There are general ideas about which colors can go where, but some rules are made to be broken.
Bedrooms look fabulous in pale pastels awash in soothing colors of blue, green, or lilac. Kitchens perk up in yellows, oranges, or reds. However, playing against type by painting a deep red on your bedroom wall or placing a pale blue backsplash in your kitchen also makes a statement about your personality.
You should also think about the overall theme of your home’s color palette. To create a cohesive aesthetic, choose a trio of complementary colors to thread throughout your home. Select ones that inhabit opposite portions of the color wheel to spark interest, and only choose one to two in vibrant shades, but not all three.
Different Finishes
There are four different finishes, and each has a particular appeal. Some do well in sun-drenched areas or high-traffic paths, whereas others are best suited to small spaces or evening lighting. Here’s a bit about each of the finishes so that you can make an informed decision.
- Semi-gloss or high-gloss: These paints have the most noticeable shine and are the most durable. A high gloss finish isn’t the best choice for a large expanse of wall as its shininess can make it distracting.
- Matte (or flat) finish: This finish is perfect for all the walls in a room, except for the ones that get a lot of foot traffic. A flat or matte finish is often a great choice for formal rooms like a living or dining room.
- Eggshell finish: This type of finish has a slightly noticeable sheen, but cleans up easily and disguises less-than-perfect walls.
- Satin finish: Although prone to handprints or smudges, a satin finish looks excellent on window trim and doors and is easy to wipe clean. It won’t wear away like matte finishes with repeated cleaning.
The bottom line is that, when choosing a new paint color, you have to take into account both the color and the finish in order to make a strong impression.
Another important tip: When you’re in the decision stage of the process, tape up your paint samples on the walls in question (all of them) and assess them over multiple hours so you can see them in all types of light. You can even use small paint samples on foam core or poster board and place them on your walls to assess a larger area.
Top Paint Companies Weigh In
It’s one thing to have a gut feeling about what color you want a particular wall or room, but many homeowners don’t necessarily have professional interior designer-like skills when it comes to picking colors, and need a little expert help.
In these situations, it’s best to look to the pros. Paint companies like Dutch Boy and Glidden all make yearly predictions by choosing a color of the year. While still getting plenty of inspiration from nature and earthy and sunset themes, the 2023 color trends are richer and deeper than those of 2022.
With the rich color combinations that harken back to 2021, this year involves natural greens and blues, accented by rich rusts or warm neutrals. Here’s a sampling of what the top paint companies have predicted are the best paint colors of 2023.
Benjamin Moore
Raspberry Blush is this paint giant’s choice for the year of 2023. This hue is a cheery coral with substantial pink undertones. This is a strong color that’s not for everyone, but its lively orange-red can add lots of warmth to your home.
This would be a perfect color suited to a cozy reading nook or a formal dining room as it would look lovely with candlelight or spotlighted with floor and table lamps. Raspberry Blush also looks magnificent as an accent wall or around a fireplace.
Sherwin-Williams
2023’s color of the year is Redend Point, which is a fabulous neutral with peachy overtones. It’s a vibrant combination of beige and blush, and would look superb in the right location. You don’t want to paint this color on a wall that gets a lot of westerly light, as it might glow a bit too pink.
In more north-facing light, Redend Point would work seamlessly as a bold neutral. Use this in a feminine-inspired office or in a modern bathroom. Another trend of 2023 is to paint the risers of your staircase as accent pieces, and Redend Point is an excellent choice for such an endeavor.
Behr
Not every paint company went for reds and earth-toned hues for their paint choices of 2023. Behr aligned with the current trend of whites and grays, but added an earthy twist. Blank Canvas is a warmer shade of white that could become your new basic.
Although cool whites have reigned supreme over the last few years, this year, Behr is spot-on with its choice of a creamier white — Blank Canvas — that would look lovely on wainscotting, crown molding or built-ins. When light hits this paint, it has many dimensions and creates a warm aura, perfect for children’s rooms or almost any other room in your house.
Glidden
This company is a part of the PPG syndication, and has all the weight of this company’s ample resources behind its color choices. Vining Ivy is a stark contrast to some of the more earthy hues from other companies.
Vining Ivy is a blue-green nod to nature that could be used to create a sumptuous and tranquil backdrop for a myriad of room uses. With its jeweled undertones, Vining Ivy is both grounding and energizing, and would blend perfectly with wood finishes or stone accents.
Dutch Boy
An excellent combo of gray and beige, Dutch Boy’s pick of the year is Rustic Greige. Ideal for family spaces, bedrooms and kitchens, a room painted in Rustic Greige wraps its occupants in warmth. It can be used as a grounding force for some more whimsical hues, and works great as a stand-alone as well.
HGTV by Sherwin Williams
Always a trailblazer, HGTV has chosen Darkroom as one of their hues of the year. This bold choice is a black with purple undertones; it can be well-described as blackberry. The wonderful thing about this statement color is that it taps into some of our shadowed sensibilities and can read as both modern and classic.
You should be careful pairing Darkroom with just any other color, and it may be too strong to mix into your home’s color palette. But if you have an old library with leather-bound books amid art and velvet sofas, this may be the moody element you’ve been looking for to augment your aesthetic.
What To Do With Your New Hue
Some of the cleverest new ways to use your favorite new paint color is to paint the risers of your staircase. Especially if you have a front door that faces a staircase, painting the risers is an ideal way to augment your color scheme where guests will see it right when they enter your home.
If your staircase can’t abide a new coat for some reason, you can use the new technique in the back of your bookcase as well, especially a built-in one. This can work especially well for bold colors as you will only really see the paint above the books. The last color on our list, Darkroom, would be an ideal choice for this approach, especially in a wooden bookcase.
If you do use accent colors, or are using some of the bolder colors on one wall or on your stair risers, incorporate some of these colors throughout the rest of your home in throw pillows or blankets. If you have art that reflects or complements the bolder hues of your color palette, consider using some to pull through colors all the way through your living space.
To sum up, earthy and rich tones still reign on the color charts and some of the cooler whites of last year are morphing into warmer tones this year, like Blank Canvas, Behr’s choice. Vining Ivy is a jewel tone somewhere between blue and green that looks wonderful with wood or stone, while Redend Point — Sherwin-Williams’ choice — falls somewhere between a peach and a beige and can help create a wonderful glow.
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