Here are Paint Expert’s top tips for choosing paint colours for your interior.

I always like to recommend that you start with your favourite colour and build your room’s colour scheme from there. When you start with the colours you like, you’re not limited to traditional colour schemes or particular decorating styles. Using your favourite colour as your base colour, you can build your colour scheme around it. Your favourite colours can help you come up with a new colour scheme for your whole house, and it will be something you truly love.

So without further ado, here are our top tips for choosing interior paint colours you’ll love.

Look for Paint Colour Inspiration

Pinterest is a firm favourite with me – you can search by a multitude of key words and save the ideas you like to an Inspiration Board so you can refer to them again and again.  Traditionally, decorating ideas have always been found in magazines and catalogues, so this is still a fabulous go-to for great inspiration.  You can even save ideas you really love to a file so you’ve got a little “story board” you can refer to and build on.

Another great place to look for inspiration and ideas is on paint websites, like this one.  Take a peek at our Colour Inspiration section as well as our Look Book for some great ideas.

Use Colour Theory to create your very own interior colour scheme

You don’t have to be a colour expert to get great ideas from a colour wheel. Use a colour wheel to see how colours might go together and learn the basics of colour theory by turning the wheel. Even though you probably won’t paint your house in the exact colours on the wheel, you can choose shades of those colours at your nearest Plascon Paint Expert store.

Try something different with neutral paint colours

Even if you choose neutral paint colours, they don’t have to be boring. You can give your neutral colour scheme a boost by getting creative with how you use the colours. Adding colour blocking or a subtle stripe can help add style without making the room look too busy.  A key to using neutral tones wisely is adding in texture, either in the form of fittings and finishes, or a different paint texture as a key feature.

Source your Interior Paint Colour from a Fabric Print

Our colour expert, Cheryl says “Look to your room’s furnishings for inspiration – items like scatter cushions, bed covers, curtains, and even rugs. For a neutral backdrop use colours from the smaller background details in the print. For a feature wall focus on the brightest colours in your fabric.”   You can take a piece of fabric to your nearest Plascon Paint Expert store so you can pick out paint stripe cards and samples to review at home.

Take Inspiration from Nature

At the moment there is a massive trend towards “bringing the outdoors inside”.   Look to the blues of the ocean or the greens of nature to create a restful ambiance in your home.  You can also include wonderful earthy tones that are more subtle but still lean in the natural direction.

Watch the Lighting

Lighting can have quite a dramatic effect on how a paint colour looks. 

Paint your colour swatch into the corner of your room on both walls, then stand back and look at it:

• In the daylight with no lights on and curtains open
• In the daylight with no lights on and curtains closed
• At night with lights on

You will notice that your chosen colour looks different under each of these lighting conditions, so this is an important step to consider.

Pick Your Interior Colour Scheme from your Favourite Artwork

The secret of an interior designer is to pick colours from the art in your home. Most artists are masters of colour and light, curating their colour schemes for their pieces. You can use their knowledge by picking colours from a piece of art you like. You can also make a colour scheme by choosing colours from the same piece of art that go well together.

Try Lighter or Darker Shades of your Favourite Hue

Sometimes, all it takes to find the right interior paint colour is a little tweaking. Think about a lighter or darker shade of the same colour before giving up on the colour you chose. Our Plascon paint swatches show a colour in a range of shades, making it easy for you to get your chosen colour a few shades lighter or darker.   You can also ask your local paint expert store to make a custom hue for you with different amounts of light and dark shades.

How to Use Undertones to Find Your Perfect Interior Paint Colour

All colours have undertones, and it’s important to know what the undertone of your chosen colour is, so you avoid unpleasant surprises.  Undertones are the colours that are hiding behind your favourite paint colour.  For instance, a colour that looks grey to you could have a green undertone. When you apply this colour to your wall it will give off a greenish cast, which might not be what you were after.  The best way to avoid this mistake is to sample your colour before purchase. The reflection of undertones from other surfaces in your room can also change how your paint looks, so it’s important to sample.

Before you go shopping, do your homework

A mistake I often see people make is choosing too many colour swatches when they are at the store, because they never narrowed down their choices beforehand.  Choosing the right colour for your interior paint starts at home. Before you go to the paint store to get swatches and samples, look through Pinterest, Instagram, magazines, and fabric swatches for ideas.  Try and narrow down your choices so you have a clear starting point.  This will keep you from getting too many paint colours on your first trip to the store.

Once you’ve narrowed your choices down to a few colours, return to the store to get paint samples to try at home. This step is important if you want to find the right colour.

Sample your Interior Paint Colour Choices before Committing

This is my number one rule when recommending new colour – always brush out a sample before buying.  This will ensure that your hard-earned cash and hours of effort are not wasted, and you’re one hundred percent satisfied with the outcome.  This step is important, so don’t skip it.

Another important step is to calculate how much paint you’ll require for your project to reduce waste.  Use our handy Paint Calculator at www.paintexpert.co.za to help with this process.

Employ an Expert Colour Consultant

A colour consultant can help you find the right interior paint colours if you want a new colour scheme but aren’t sure where to start. A colour consultant can give ideas for paint colours to try out or even make a custom colour palette for your home.

Before you meet with your colour consultant, put together some ideas and pictures to show them what you have in mind. Ask your consultant to come to your space at a certain time so he or she can see the impact of natural light, etc.  ​​

Remember that you can go the any Plascon Paint Expert store nationwide and receive free colour advice and expertise.  Each store has their own skilled colour tinting staff that can manually colour match any colour your heart desires.  Exploring colour in your home is such an exciting journey, and remember that if you don’t like it for whatever reason, you can simply paint over it again!