Living Room Paint Colors
The excitement of owning your first home!
You’ll rearrange the furniture until you drive your family crazy. You will cook aromatic meals in your new kitchen. Accessories will be placed. You’ll walk around the yard, staring at that wonderful house. What you’re actually doing is considering paint colors for your living room. Both of you love the hardwood floor and beams on the ceilings. You have SureSwatch with which to test ideas. You’re all set.
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You consult the top decorating guru with which you’re acquainted for ideas. Today’s Houzz favorite colors tend toward grays. A gray shade closely resembling pewter is especially effective. The trim, windows and doors, moldings, and baseboards are without fail painted white, which has the effect of making the grays recede into the background. Living rooms done in grays can always use accessories and artwork incorporating pops of bright color to lead the eye around the room.
Some design rules are flexible, others are not really made to be broken. When it comes to choosing paint colors for living rooms, there are things you should and should not do to make sure you do not spin the color wheel the wrong way. Too many people focus only on how to choose the right colors, it can be equally as beneficial to know how to avoid picking the wrong ones.
Avoid These Mistakes With Living Room Paint Colors
Choosing the Color First
Choosing paint colors for your living room should not be at the top of your to-do list. You need to plan the room first. You want the paint color you select to support the rest of the room. It should balance the furniture, fabrics, and décor already in the room. Doing it the other way around guarantees a more painful experience.
Picking Bright Colors
There is nothing wrong with using bright paint colors, but you need to make sure the rest of the items in your room are neutral colors. Even white furnishings are a good idea for bright paint colors. You also need to think about what you want the focus of the room to be. If the focus is supposed to be the walls, bright colors are fine. If you don’t want the focus on the wall, bright colors are a bad idea.
Consider the Entire Home
Even though you are only picking the color for your living room, you need to think about the entire house. You may not want your living room to be a wild and crazy color while the rest of the house is saturated colors. It is a good idea to consider the rest of the home and find a color that complements the entire house.
Color Psychology for Living Rooms
Next to the kitchen and bathroom, your family probably spends the greatest amount of time in the living room. It’s also generally the first room that guests see when they arrive, as well as the place most people typically entertain. This makes it one of the most important rooms in the house. It also means that choosing paint colors for living rooms is among one of the most stress-inducing tasks for do-it-yourselfers. If you’ve found yourself getting uptight and tossing tiny paint swatch samples around, take a deep breath, relax, and keep reading. Our tips will help guide you through the paint selection process.
One of the first considerations when choosing paint colors for living rooms is color psychology, or how different colors make us feel. Marketers for big companies understand this concept well, and they use it to draw your eye to specific packages on the shelf, cause you to spend way more time than you’d intended on a social media site, or move you quickly in and out of a fast-food restaurant so they can serve additional customers.
Choosing a color for your living room is kind of like marketing to yourself. How would you like people to feel when they settle down on your living room sofa? Blue, for instance, elicits feelings of calm and serenity. Yellow is a warm, happy color. On the other hand, red (if used in excess) can be overstimulating. Read up on color psychology to set you off on the right foot in choosing paint colors for living rooms.
Play with Different Colors
If your living room suffers from a lack of natural light, painting it can be a way to brighten things up. Colors such as butter yellow and ivory work well to make a room feel lighter and even larger. Alternately, you can pick a tone from the largest pattern you have in the room — the upholstery from your couch, perhaps. Opting for colors that complement your decor are a surefire way to create a space that’s visually appealing and puts everyone at ease.
Test Colors with a SureSwatch
Changing wall colors in your living room can be nerve-wracking, but SureSwatch helps take some of the suspense and frustration out of the process. Simply paint a SureSwatch, let it dry, and stick it on one of your living room walls. You can pop on one SureSwatch or several of them to compare different colors on different walls. This allows you to test different colors all around the room to see how they’ll look at different angles, in different areas, and with various aspects of your decor.
Consider Adding an Accent Wall
Choosing paint colors doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing. You can also create an accent wall and add in a second color that you adore. Again, using a SureSwatch can help you choose the right color; you’ll want one that compliments the main hue of your living room, as well as the decor. Whatever you choose, don’t be afraid to go bold!
Generally, an accent wall should be the wall to which your eye is naturally drawn when you enter a room. This is often the wall behind your television or around a fireplace. Any wall that features an interesting architectural element (a mantelpiece, brick inlay, or some sort of sitting or reading nook) can also make a great accent wall.
With SureSwatch to help, choosing paint colors for living rooms doesn’t have to be a headache. Whether you go with one overall color or opt to add in an accent wall, you’ll find that repainting is a dramatic and affordable way to transform your living room — and your home.
For more tips on choosing paint colors for living rooms, check out our blog! SureSwatch is available nationwide at Ace Hardware and Home Depot
