The World of Color for Your Home 

In the paint industry, paint manufactures work year round to determine their “Color of the Year.” For Sherwin Williams selected a southwest Cavern Clay. Visit SW Cavern Clay Web Page. Benjamin went with a soft hue of gray Metropolitan Benjamin Moore's Webpage introducing Metropolitan; PPG announced a bold color Night Watch PPG's Announcement there is much fanfare by companies when announcing their annual colors on their respective websites from elaborate videos with online tools to upload you own home photos to test out colors. Their research is very extensive with time and money invested to roll out their “color of the year” hoping customers will want this color in their homes.

Most major paint manufactures have color experts that travel the world.  Both Benjamin Moore’s and Sherwin Williams color experts will look at colors in architecture, nature, clothing and even food. There is one article I remember when doing research for writing this article that explained how a color expert brought a bag of onions to the color committee. Onion skins created a new color! Color is fascinating and not at all complicated it’s simplistic just look down on the ground we walk on or at the vast colors of the sky to see how the experts view the world around us in formulating paint colors.

As stated in an article written by Alicia Brunker in Architectural Digest - How Top Companies Predict Color Trends Andrea Mango from Benjamin explains:

“While the trends are clearly laid out, the path to determining the final color range isn’t so cut and dry. “We don’t have a crystal ball that tells us what our Color of the Year is going to be,” says Benjamin Moore’s color and design expert Andrea Magno. “We spend months researching and traveling around the world, attending design shows and picking up cues and influences from different industries, including fashion, art, and even politics. Then the next step is bringing that information back and determining what the common threads are between these different disciplines and areas of the world.”

From traveling the world to visiting cosmetic counters who would have guessed how serious and devoted these experts to select their color of the year. If you are not hiring a designer to assist you in selecting colors, and yes, the designer does ask you questions to learn what colors you do like? What’s your style? Trendy or classic? One great place to start is your closet! Yes, look at the color of the clothes you buy. These are most likely the colors you love so why not have them on your walls. There is this great article from Houzz that backs this concept up Choosing Color for Your Home.

Here at Sam’s Painting we take color very seriously, we want our customers to take the time to think about the colors they like and translate that into the color palettes available from paint manufactures. If considering an extensive color change the major paint manufactures websites have a variety of color tools where by uploading a photo of the interior room or the exterior of your home, you can test out what a color will look like. Of course, your professional paint contractor will help guide you through the process from paint samples to hiring a color consultant for the best color choice for your interior or exterior paint project.