How to Choose the Perfect Color Palette for your Home

If you remember, we just bought a new house on Halloween and we’ve been slowly settling in ever since. It was important to me to get things right in the house the first time because with our last house, I didn’t feel like the look had any cohesive style. I picked colors for rooms one.at.a.time. based on what spoke to me that very moment. I didn’t think of how the colors would speak for my overall home and as a result, we not only wasted a lot of money buying paint, but we wasted a lot of time painting rooms two or more times. NOT FUN! With our new home, I wanted to jump in HEAD FIRST and tackle the house and all the rooms colors up front. Today I’m sharing with you how I worked with the awesome Sherwin Williams HGTV Paint Collection at Lowe’s to choose the perfect color palette for my home. Is it a simple as it looks? Let’s find out!!

When I first starting envisioning my new home, I wanted something completely different from my last home. My last home was very traditional and I always felt limited by my prior color choices because with the fresh and colorful trends we see today…my rooms were anything but fresh and colorful. To add color to my rooms, I’d have to completely overhaul them and aint’ nobody got time for that 🙂 So to start out, I made a list of all the rooms in my home.Once I had my list made, I decided to go through and write out details of what I envisioned. Things that were important to me in each room were starred. I even started a board on Pinterest with ideas or things I wanted to remember for each room. For example, for my laundry room I knew I wanted a mudroom space with cubbies and cabinets and shelves. I ALSO knew that I had always wanted to paint my mudroom a pale blue color with bright white trim and to add a beadboard ceiling with a pretty light fixture. So I made those notes. Room by room I worked through my vision of the space. It’s easier to layout your overall home vision up front rather than going it one room at a time I find. Then you can start finding some uniformity in the style of your home and some cohesion in the color choices. I started this step as soon as we went into contract on the house…and modified it several times along the way. This is basically your brainstorming step, nothing is set in stone!

After I had laid out my ideas, I started searching Pinterest for my paint colors. Pinterest is SUCH a wonderful tool for searching for ideas, but especially for paint colors. If I had no clue what color I was looking for, I’d search mudrooms and pin those that stood out to me…or if I had a specific color in mind, I’d search the name of that color on Pinterest and see specific examples where real people used that color for a blog post and how it looked in their home. This helped me rule out a ton of color possibilities, but it also helped me pre-determine what colors would look best!! During this step, I started making a list of what “shades” of each color and the name of that color I was considering. Since I knew I wanted to use my trusted Sherwin Williams brand, it made it easy to eliminate other brands’ colors. **As a side note, since I’ve been a homeowner, we’ve always preferred Sherwin Williams, so I’m obviously THRILLED to be able to partner with them on this post. The Sherwin Williams HGTV line of paints at Lowe’s is even better because I have the convenience now of getting my favorite brand at one of my favorite home improvement stores!!**

Armed with my list of rooms, my overall design vision for my home, and list of paint colors from Sherwin Williams that are speaking to me…I headed to my local Lowe’s and started pulling samples from the Sherwin Williams area to take home. I searched for all the colors that I had written down, then grabbed some extras for good measure to give me more options. Then I went home and got started.

Once I got home, I got started organizing my colors. I sorted each color into the potential rooms that they would go in so I could compare them. I had it narrowed down to about 2-3 color options for each room and on the swatch I’d write Living Room 1, Living Room 2, Living Room 3 and lay them out. I did this for all my rooms: Laundry room, living room/dining room, kitchen (I have one large open concept room for all those spaces), half bathroom, full bathroom, daughter’s room, son’s room, master bedroom, master bathroom. *During this process, I got to see how all the colors flowed together, did they work? Did they clash? Did they look too similar or two different?!

This is the first step where you get to see ALL your colors together. Determine how you like them together and if they have some sort of cohesion.

For example, in making my selections, I knew I wanted cool, bright, and refreshing colors in my house. I didn’t want the traditional tans and greens and reds…and the walls were already painted dark tan. I wanted something that really brightened each room up for a light and airy look. I decided I wanted a mix of cottage/farmhouse coloring so I started working with grays, soft blues and sea greens, and soft lavenders for my daughter’s room. Some of my grays looked too tan or too purple, so I started eliminating the ones that clashed and replacing them with similar hues.

We spent a week narrowing our color choices down and eliminating the options and by the end of the week we’d decided on a color for each room.

Laundry Room: Tradewind Blue

Once we got our samples and put them on the walls, we were able to see how they looked in the room with the lighting. For example, we couldn’t decide on one of the colors for our son’s room…so we got two samples and one of them looked more white than gray, so we eliminated it. When you’re selecting colors in the store, it’s important to remember that they use bright lighting and that your natural lighting at home may give that color a very different look. Stew over the samples on the walls for a day or two and put them on different walls in the room….compare how they look in morning lighting and evening lighting. And if they are what you’d like…then proceed with buying! YAY! The decision making is nearly done.

Visit HGTV by Sherwin Williams for more information about products and loads of color ideas!

I received free products in return for my writing of this post. All thoughts and opinions are 100% my own.