how to pick out paint colors

How do you pick out paint colors thats gonna look right with the particular room you're painting. I'm not good at looking at a room and visualizing the room in a different color. My wife is the one that picks the color but I'm like just pick it and I'll paint it. Our laundry room is maybe 8'x10' roughly and we put in a slate grey color floor a couple months ago. The room has a door with a window that leads to the deck and the laundry room has a door from the hallway. She was looking at a teal or light green/blue for that one. Also, somebody here at work asked well are you gonna have it flowing with the same color family as the kitchen and hallway which is close by? He said some people do and some don't.

Living room has a brick (red) fireplace and brown wood beams(4 total going off memory) on the ceiling. from the chair railing down used to be like brown wood, but previous owner painted it white which is fine. The wall color through out the house is a khaki color.

Just needing some help on how to choose colors.

 

we have the same problem that is why the better half usually picks a neutral color

 

I have actually studied this to some degree. See, every year we have a parade of homes where you can visit literally hundreds of new houses in the area ranging from 100k to mulit-million dollar ones. In looking at these houses, my wife and I try to see what is going on in the world of new construction with designs and paint. I caught up with a girl at one really beautiful house. She was going from room to room with a swatch book. There were a few colors that I really liked and asked her what they were. She told me the secret was that most of the colors, were not as they would seem. One particular room was an earthy green. But in reality, it was a grey with a green hue. So, she proceded to tell me to start looking at greys, and go out into the colors from there in whatever direction you want. After owning several homes in the past 15 years, I've painted a lot of rooms, and using that advice, I've always been happy with the choices. Never would have thought.... Grey.................

 

When it comes to paint in my house I've very racist, and paint all my rooms white.

 

Totally agree. Head toward neutral, and it'll never seem dated.

 

Most paint stores will mix small samples that will let you put a couple of square feet in the area you are interested it. Helps visualize the area based on lighting and fixures a little, plus it's and much larger than a paint chip.

For rooms that flow together (no closable doorway) we typically use complimentary colors. Most color families have 3-4 shades/compliments.

For rooms that have doorways, but are still highly visible when the doors are open, we often use similar to the open areas. Less directly seen rooms are other soft colors, but may compliment each other if you can see both at once, like adjacent BR doors.

 

you can try using a paint color wheel - Amazon has them pretty cheap and they are pretty straight forward to use. It is also personal preference, with white trim I like to go darker on the walls so the trim is more defined.

 

Well, if he gets things done at my pace then he still has at least another year before he really has to make the decision.