Most people choose a colour from a small chip under bright store lighting, then find it looks nothing like that on their own walls. Nothing went wrong with the paint. The light did what light always does.
Start with the direction the room faces
The windows decide more about a colour than almost anything else.
- North-facing rooms get steady, indirect light with a cool, slightly blue cast. Colours read greyer and a little darker than the chip. Warm neutrals — creams, soft greiges, warm whites — usually feel better here than cool greys, which can turn flat.
- South-facing rooms get strong, warm light for most of the day. Colours look brighter and warmer. Cooler colours hold up well, and deep colours look richer than you expect.
- East-facing rooms are bright and warm in the morning and cooler by afternoon. Choose for the time of day you actually use the room.
- West-facing rooms are cool and even in the morning and glow orange in the late afternoon. A colour that looks right at noon can turn much warmer by evening.
Then look at the bulbs
After dark, your lamps are the light. Bulb packaging lists a colour temperature in kelvin: around 2700K is warm and yellowish, 3000K is a soft white, and 4000K and above is cool and bluish. The same wall can look like two different colours under two different bulbs, so test samples under the bulbs you plan to keep.
Undertones are where colours surprise you
Most neutrals have an undertone — a hint of yellow, pink, green or blue sitting underneath. You often cannot see it on a chip by itself, but it appears next to other colours, especially white trim, cabinets, stone or flooring.
The simplest way to see an undertone is to compare. Hold a few similar chips side by side, or against a sheet of plain white paper, and the differences show immediately.
Light and dark: what LRV tells you
Paint makers publish a light reflectance value (LRV) for each colour — a number from 0 (black) to 100 (pure white) describing how much light it reflects. It is a useful shortcut:
- A dim room usually benefits from a higher LRV.
- A very bright room can carry a lower LRV without feeling heavy.
- Two colours with very different LRVs on neighbouring walls will read as a strong contrast, even if they are similar in hue.
Narrow it down, then test
Pick two or three contenders rather than ten. Then test them properly, in the room itself — which is a job worth doing well. Our guide to testing paint samples covers how.
If you would rather not do it alone, colour consultation is exactly this process, done with you, in your own light.