A Simple Guideline in Choosing the Right Colours in Your DIY Painting Project

Types of Rooms
The choice of colours is influenced by the type of room to be painted. Normally, a bedroom colour needs to be relaxing, soothing or even intimate. To achieve the right ambiance, soft, cool or neutral colours are advisable. To paint bedrooms for kids, parents may choose colours based on their kids favourite colours. Blue shades are generally the choices for boys and pink shades generally suit best for girls.
In heavy traffic areas like hallways or corridors, colours that are less susceptible to stain are ideal but lighter colours are applicable as well. If lighter colours are used, washable paints would be more ideal to use.

Moods to Achieve
• Warm and cosy. Warm and cosy colours are normally used in dining area or receiving area. They make every room inviting not only to homeowners but to visitors as well. This ambiance can be achieved by using warm paint colours that complement the colour scheme of the room. Various shades of contrasting or matching warm colours can also be used. Examples of warms colours are shades and tones of yellow, orange and red.

• Calm and relaxing. Calm and relaxing rooms are commonly used in bedrooms but it does not mean that the other rooms in the house cannot have this ambiance as well. Neutral colours are some of the best choices for a soothing environment. The shades of browns and creams can also transform a room into a restful and rejuvenating place. Other choices of colour that can make a room relaxing are green and its different shades.

• Light and uplifting. The right choice of paint colours can also help change the mood of every member of the household from gloom and doom to a more positive note. A dark and gloomy room can be converted into an uplifting and inspiring room by painting it with light colours such as light yellow, light green and so on.
• Romantic. This atmosphere can also be achieved with soft and soothing colours such as white and other light colours accompanied with romantic decorations and inviting and soft beddings. The use of bright red colour is another way to express romance.
• Spacious and airy. A room, regardless of its size, can make anybody feel claustrophobic with wrong choice of paint colours. To avoid this problem, colours have to be chosen carefully. Light, cool and light pastel colours are ideal to use to achieve that spacious and airy ambiance.

Brightness of the room
The amount of natural light that comes into a room has to be considered as well when choosing what colours to use. Natural light tends to show the truest colour of the room. Darker rooms or rooms that are hidden from the sun most of the time need brighter colours. To compensate for so much natural light, darker shades are better choices.

Size of the room
A room can appear bigger or smaller than its actual size depending on its colour. This makes the right choice of colour very important in changing the ambiance of a small room into an area that appears to accommodate everybody. One way to do it is to paint the small room with the same colour scheme as its adjacent room. This will create a continuous colour flow, creating that bigger space impression.

Solid colours will also do the job as they make an area look deeper and bigger. As an example, an adjoining kitchen to the dining room can be painted solid to make it look bigger. To make the job perfect, both colours must complement each other.

If light colours make a small room look bigger, dark colours do the opposite. With dark colours, light is absorbed, giving the room that smaller space appearance. Dark shades of taupe, brown, blue and green colours are ideal for big and high ceiling rooms.

A massive room for a living room can be less inviting for the family to hang around if the ambiance is not right. An accent wall can convert a big and less intimate room into a room the family loves to spend their time together. An accent wall is a wall painted with bold colours in contrast to the overall neutral colour of the room. Ideally, accent walls are behind a fireplace, a bookshelf or behind any dominant structure of the room. Examples of these paint colours are Dulux paint in rich chocolate colours, green and deep mauves.

Choosing the right paint colours is just a part of a successful DIY painting project. Repairing any damage in the area to be painted has to be done first before any painting job starts. Loose timber moulding for instance can be easily fixed with the help of a cordless drill and Spax screws.