Is there any website where i can see what kind of color will look how on the wall? I am planning to get my living room re-painted and looking for some ideas.
Any suggestions?
Add a comment
|
3 Answers
I'd second Greebo's suggestion of buying samples, but we've found that painting lining paper works better.
Firstly, you can move the patch around the room to see it in the different conditions that exist in your room - next to window, in the dark corner beside the chimney, etc.
Secondly, you don't have to worry about a darker colour showing through if you end up choosing a lighter colour.
Thirdly, you can reuse the sample in another room or even in someone else's house.
-
-
1And don't forget to look at different times of the day -- it might look great in the middle of the day, but crap in the morning / evening under low-light or artificial light.– JoeCommented Oct 10, 2011 at 15:13
-
1@Joe is absolutely right. My wife and I painted our bedroom a gray-brown which looks fantastic during the day, but gains a horrible purple hue under CFL lighting. Our solution was GE Reveal light bulbs, which produce a wider spectrum of light, more accurately mimicking daylight.– DoresoomCommented Oct 11, 2011 at 14:51
Web sites won't match your lighting, and your monitor color may be slightly off, so it's not feasible to get anything but a really ROUGH idea of how your paints will look in reality by looking at them online.
So what to do?
First of all, your paint store will have color sheets - papers with multiple colors on them that you can take home and compare. This is good for getting you in the ball park of what you want.
Once you have some general ideas of the colors you prefer, go back to the paint store and buy some samples - Lowes for example will sell samples for $3.00 per color sample. Go home and paint on the wall directly - like this:
Then you can see larger examples of what each color looks like. It's a small investment to help ensure you make the right decision.
answered Oct 9, 2011 at 11:10
-
2Take note that the $3 color samples are usually only available in flat sheen (at least in my experience). Eggshell, satin, etc. will look slightly different.– DoresoomCommented Oct 11, 2011 at 14:53
-
1also note that the surrounding color plays a HUGE factor in the perception of the samples, so even then, it's an imperfect science. ;)– DA01Commented Oct 17, 2011 at 18:31
The big paint company websites have apps that will let you do this, but the other answers are right about that only being a rough look, and samples being a better method. The one use for the whole room virtual view is that a sample that looks good in one square foot might not look so good in a whole room. Once you settle on a few colors from the sampling method, check it out in a website (or have somebody who knows photoshop change the colors in photos of your actual rooms), to sanity check that applying that color overall will still look acceptable.
