How to Choose the Right Paint
If you have ever found yourself walking through the paint aisle at your local home improvement store you know how overwhelming all of those choices can be. From the thousands of color choices to the different sheens and paint types it can be a lot to take in. If that all has you feeling overwhelmed, don’t worry, we’re here to help!
Starting out with the most important decision, color. Everyone has their own personal preference when it comes to colors, but we have a few tips to help you choose something that will leave you satisfied long after the job is complete. For smaller rooms without many windows such as a bathroom or a den we recommend lighter colors, this will help make the room feel larger and more inviting. We also strongly suggest picking up a color wheel from a paint shop to bring home and see the colors in your space, you’ll be surprised how often a color that looked perfect in the store doesn’t excite you quite so much when you hold it up at home. Once you have it narrowed down, order paint samples of the colors you have in mind and paint a small portion of one of the walls with the different colors to help you decide. It can be hard to get a true feel of a color until you see it on the walls. These samples will cost you about $5 each, but can end up saving you hundreds and hundreds of dollars if you ended up having to change your mind once a room was already painted.
As far as sheens go there are typically 5 basic options: flat, eggshell, satin, semi-gloss, and gloss.
Your flat paints provide a smooth finish with almost no sheen. Flat or matte paint is also the best at hiding imperfections, so if you have a room with lots of patchwork or old nail holes this might be your best bet. One downside of flat paint is that it is the hardest sheen to clean.
Eggshell paints have slightly more sheen than flats and are also a bit easier to clean. Eggshell is a very versatile finish and is a safe choice for most rooms.
Satin has a medium sheen level and we recommend it for high traffic areas such as kids bedrooms, entryways, or kitchens. A bonus of getting into the higher sheens such as satin and beyond is that they are much more washable than a flat or eggshell. This is part of what makes it so great for the rooms that see the most wear and tear like those mentioned above.
Semi-gloss has a high sheen level and can really stand out amongst the others. This makes it an ideal paint for trim, doors, cabinets, and other pieces you want to really catch the eye. One thing to note is that neither semi-gloss or gloss do a good job of hiding imperfections, something to keep in mind if you are set on using either on your walls.
Finally, gloss.. as you may have guessed it has the highest sheen. We don’t typically use full gloss, but if you are planning on doing so, we would recommend just keeping it to surfaces such as fireplaces, doors, kitchen cabinets and trim.
Hopefully this post served as your crash course on paint selection and you can walk through the paint aisles a little more confidently. As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you have any other questions regarding your paint, that’s what we’re here for!
