1. Choosing your paint color first

Before painting your walls, you need to start with a plan for your space! Selecting your paint colors before you have selected the fixed elements or the furnishings can leave the room feeling disjointed. If you are in the middle of a renovation, I always recommend creating a design board to visualize everything together. If you are replacing fixed elements, make sure to have all of the samples of tiles, countertops, flooring, and cabinetry in hand before selecting the paint color. Once you have the design plan in place, selecting the paint color is the last step to creating the space of your dreams!

2. Selecting the wrong undertones

You think you selected the perfect gray paint, but now that’s it’s on your walls, all you see is blue. You were sure that this beautiful beige would be the best color for your living room, but now you keep getting hints or pink or orange. This is because you are seeing the undertone of the paint and it may be fighting with your other decor! This is a common mistake seen when people update their home that was built during one macro trend and update the paint color during the next trend. It’s not unusual to see a kitchen or a bathroom with warm tones of the Tuscan trend that the next owner moves in and decides to leave all of the fixed elements and just paint the walls gray. The room ends up looking all wrong! In this case, working with the undertones that are already in the room and updating with a soft off-white (with the right undertone of course!) would be better. Another option I love, is to lean into the tones that are there, find artwork or decor to pull in those undertones along with a new color that will work with the space and give the room a newer, fresher look.

3. Thinking white is the easy answer

With the black & white and modern organic decor trends over the last few years, white has been a go-to paint color for many! However, I always tell clients that white is actually one of the most difficult paint colors to choose. It is very easy for white to look too stark or sterile and it can also be difficult to keep clean. The lighting and accessories used in professional interior photography often warm up the space in images, so trying to replicate that look in your own home can be challenging. If you are planning on white paint in your room, I always suggest paying close attention to the undertone of the white, taking into account the amount of natural light in the room, and finishing off the space by adding plenty of greenery.

4. Painting lots of color samples over your existing paint color

After looking at lots of paint swatches, you narrow it down to a few choices and run to the paint store to pick up the sample containers. You come home and paint the colors over your existing paint. Then you continue to stare at the wall and still struggle to pick a color. You may not realize it, but unless you have pure white walls to start with, you are going to be influenced by the original wall color. A better solution is to paint boards that you can move around the room and place a white board behind to minimize any color confusion. If you don’t want to paint your own samples, purchasing peel & stick paint samples is another option. A good resource for peel & stick paint samples is Samplize.

5. Crowdsourcing your color selection

If you spend any time in DIY home decor groups, you will constantly see people asking for photos of paint colors that other people have painted in their homes. The problem with this is while that color may work perfectly in one house, it may clash with the decor in someone else’s house. I’ve seen this go very wrong and the homeowner is left with a costly mistake! It’s much better to work with your own decor and the style of your home to determine what the perfect color is for your own space!

If you are suffering from paint color paralysis and want to save yourself from costly color mistakes, your can book a one hour paint consultation here:

https://designfiles.co/design-packages/ebony-oak-interiors/paint-color-consulation

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