Effective Ways to Match Paint Colours for Your Home Interior and Exterior
Over time, both the interiors and exteriors of your home undergo wear and tear, causing noticeable changes in paint colours. Whether you're repainting your walls, furniture, fence, or other surfaces, matching paint colours with your existing decor can be challenging. Luckily, there are various methods and tools available to make this process easier.
In this guide, we’ll explore the 7 best ways to match paint colours, focusing on both interior design and exterior painting. Whether you’re refreshing your home’s interior or giving your outdoor spaces a makeover, these tips will help you achieve a cohesive and stylish look.
Top 7 Methods for Matching Paint Colours
- Use Paint Chips for Accurate Colour Coordination
When trying to coordinate colours across multiple surfaces, such as your wall colour and kitchen furniture, paint chips are a great starting point. Head to your local paint store and grab paint chips in various shades. Once you have the samples, bring them home and compare them to your existing walls or furniture under various lighting conditions (e.g., natural light, lamplight). This helps ensure the colours harmonize well.
- Explore Colour Swatches for More Variety
Colour swatches offer a convenient method for aligning hues with an existing painted surface, coloured fabric, or image. Simply visit your nearby paint store to acquire complimentary Dulux and Berger colour swatches. The process is straightforward: place the colour swatch next to the surface you want to match and experiment with different colours until you discover the closest match. However, it's essential to note a couple of considerations when using colour swatches. Not all Dulux and Berger colours are available in swatch form, and the quality of natural light can affect how a colour appears, appearing brighter in the morning and deeper in the evening.
- Eyeball Paint Choices for Quick Comparison
Trying to flat-out check the matching paint colours is not uncommon by people checking them on and off. In fact, as a house owner or an owner of a commercial property, you might be quite enthusiastic about eyeing the paint choices while choosing one. Today people might not consider this as a matching paint colour tool, but it is ideally the best alternative of all times. For example, you might not want the exact mahogany red paint you found in your family's ancestors' house but a shade of it here and there. This is when a matching paint colour tool like eyeball paint choices is an approach to choosing shades of colours.
- Try Paint Colour Matching Apps
Today, there are a variety of paint colour matching apps that make it easy to find the right hue. Simply take a picture of your current paint colour, upload it to an app, and the app will suggest similar shades. Many major paint companies now offer apps to help you match colours quickly and efficiently, such as Sherwin Williams' ColorSnap or Benjamin Moore's Color Capture.
- Use a Spectrophotometer for Precision
A spectrophotometer is a device that can scan surfaces to calculate pigments found in different paints that have matching components. To be more precise about this, a spectrophotometer is an instrument that can help you in finding errors in paint colours. In addition to this, spectrophotometer instruments also help in associating different paint colours with almost the same shading in the shortest time possible. Moreover, it also detects contamination issues in matching paint colours and lets you choose the best colour among multiple colour options. The best and most helpful spectrophotometer is MatchRite iVue and this is a versatile non-contact device.
- Utilize Brush Out Boards for Testing
If paint from your interior and exterior is completely falling off its place, then this is an effective tool to count on. Brush out boards are typically small boards or panels where paint samples are applied to test and match colours before painting a larger surface. Matching paint colour accurately is essential to achieving the desired result in interior and exterior painting projects.
- Consult a Professional Paint Consultant
If you want to find an effective and affordable alternative, then choose top-rated house painter consultant. Being a specialist in the painting industry, a paint consultant gives you the best suggestions you want to hear with a close matching paint colour. In fact, you will be amazed at the speed a professional paint consultant helps you find a quick matching paint colour. Moreover, you also get a written quote in return for availing of professional paint consultant assistance.
Conclusion
While these paint matching methods can be incredibly useful, remember that the appearance of paint colours can vary based on lighting, surrounding decor, and personal perception. Before committing to a large painting project, always test a small patch on your wall or surface to evaluate how it looks under different lighting conditions.