Rules of Renovation Reviews: How to Pick the Best Paint Color for Your Walls

“How do I pick out the best colors of wall paint for my house flip?” That's a question we hear a lot in our renovation workshops. It's an important question. People are going to see the walls as soon as they walk in during an open house and whenever they walk into a new room.

At Rules of Renovation, we have two major ideas for you below for choosing great-looking wall colors and for testing them. Remember, this can be a lot of fun! You don't have to take paint too seriously. If you make a mistake here and there, you can learn from it and just paint over it. Go in with an open mind and enjoy the home improvement process.

Choose Great Colors 

Buyers don't want to paint their walls after they buy a house. They're excited to move in and start living there, not to put plastic down on the floors and start painting. So it's important to pick great colors for the interior walls. But how do you choose?

As with any skill, you need to learn the traditional rules first. For example, we often advise our home improvement students to paint walls in neutral colors that any buyer can work with. You’ll have a lot of house flips where that’s the best approach, and you should practice it.

There are a few rules-of-thumb for room color. For example, greens and blues are calming and are good for bedrooms and kitchens, whereas earth tones, reds, and oranges work better for social areas.

But you can also learn when to break the classic rules and when to experiment and make a statement. Look through design magazines and blogs for the latest trends. For example, you could paint a bedroom or featured living room in an exciting, bold color scheme inspired by another culture, such as Latin American, Russian, or Indian.

Test Wall Paint to Make Sure the Color Is Right 

Have you picked out some wall paint colors that you’re excited about? A common challenge is they might look different on the actual walls you envision them on, no matter how they looked in the store, on a swatch, or in a magazine. So, use these methods to test them.

Be thorough in your testing. Don’t get worried about wasting paint or money. It'll be a bigger waste if you pick the wrong color now and paint a whole room or two with it.

To really know what a paint looks like, test it on all four walls of a room and look at it at different times of day and under different lighting conditions. A paint’s shade can appear to change throughout the day, and the light in a room is going to be different than at the hardware store. You have a winner if you like it under all conditions.

Also, only judge a wall paint under the conditions it'll be in when truly finished. If you're going to eventually apply more than one coat of paint on a wall, apply that number of coats in your test area, too.

Test a wall paint on top of primer if it’s going to be on a primer. Even use the same brush or roller you'll use for the whole room. Finally, make as large of a test area as you need to be sure you really like it. It’s hard to judge a color based on a tiny rectangle of paint.

A Great Return on Investment

Paint has a major influence on the gut-level feelings of buyers, but it's not a huge investment for you. It’s also not too risky, because you can always repaint a room until you really like it. If you and your team end up loving a color, someone else out there is going to love it, too.

To get more design ideas for your home improvements and house flips, register for a Hilary Farr Rules of Renovation event near you.