Another Bit on color - Nancy Sadowski

I suggest that once you have decided on your primary or anchor color, you can go to a paint store and get paint chips in all the shades you want to use.  Get paint chips that have various values (hues) of the color or colors that you want to use.  This gives you a variety of choices to carry to the other rooms or for accessorizing.  There are paint chips that have various hues plus accent colors all on one small piece.  Paint chips are free and will help you find your greatest scheme.  Put them together, mix them up, try all the various schemes.  You will come up with a scheme that is pleasing to you.  Use your walls as an easel.  Tape the pieces to your walls and look at them in all types of light. Move them from wall to wall, to see their color in different lights.  Each wall in your room shows color differently, so the intensity will change in different light

The best thing today is that you can buy small samples of paint to try out.

Save all the chips and paint samples, as you may have a use for them later.  I usually put the paint chips in al envelope and mark paint chip and color.  Glue the chips you have chosen for your scheme on a piece of paper, to use later.  When you have chosen the colors, make sure you write them down, with the formula and the brand of the paint so you have that at your fingertips.  I also write down where I bought the paint and any guarantees that go with the paint, all for future reference.

I wrote a book in 1983, on "How To Design a Room",  a lot of this is excerpts from the book, and a lot I have added since that time.  I suggest you get a binder or folder to keep with you, with all the information you have collected.  It will help you find and put all the pieces together as you go.

Another way to start  your room is decorate it around existing items.  Paintings, draperies, favorite piece of pottery or any collectable you may have.

The following is out of a House Beautiful Magazine, to how you how some color schemes are decided upon:

 

See how all the colors are taken from a collection.

 

See how well they all go together.

 

Start saving ideas from magazine.  Now you can scan them and save them on your computer in a home file.