How to Choose a Feature Wall Colour
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The colour on the chip is not the colour you will live with
Paint does not have one colour, it has a range of them, and which one you get depends entirely on the light falling on it. That is why a grey that looked calm and warm under the shop lights can turn out cold and slightly blue on your own wall, and why people talk themselves out of trusting their own eye when the problem was never their eye.
So the whole job here is working out what a colour does in your room, at the times of day you are actually in it.
Which way the room faces changes everything
In this part of the world a north facing room gets the direct sun for most of the day, so it runs warm and it will push a colour yellower and brighter than the chip suggests. A south facing room gets no direct sun at all and runs cool and even, which is lovely for a study and unforgiving of a colour with grey in it, because the grey will read blue.
East gets the morning and goes flat by the afternoon. West gets that strong orange light in the last couple of hours, which will make a warm colour glow and a cool one look muddy.
Work out which way your room faces before you go anywhere near a colour chart, because it narrows the field faster than anything else you can do.
Use a sample pot properly, which almost nobody does
Do not paint a patch straight onto the wall. Two reasons, and both of them matter. The colour already on the wall bleeds into how you see the new one, and you end up committing to a whole room because you cannot move the patch around.
Instead, paint two coats onto a sheet of white card, a bit of offcut plasterboard or a scrap of MDF, and let it dry properly, because most paint dries noticeably darker than it goes on. Then move that card around the room and prop it against the skirting, hold it near the window, stand it where the sofa will go.
Look at it in the morning, look at it in the middle of the day, and look at it at night under whatever lights you actually have on. A warm globe and a cool globe will do completely different things to the same paint, and the night version is the one you will see most often through winter.
Live with the card for a few days. If you keep walking past it and it keeps looking right, that is your answer.
Choosing the wall itself
The wall you see first when you walk into the room is the obvious candidate, and so is the wall behind the bed or the sofa, because a feature wall works best when it is framing something. Avoid a wall broken up by a door, a window and a run of shelves, because the colour never gets a clear run at anything and the effect is lost.
A chimney breast or an alcove is the easiest win in the house, since the shape is already doing half the work for you.
Restraint usually beats boldness
The feature walls that still look good years later tend to be the ones that sit a couple of steps away from the rest of the room rather than shouting at it. A deeper version of a colour already in the room, or a soft green behind timber, will carry a room without dating. A bold colour can absolutely work, and it works best when something else in the room is already picking it up, whether that is a rug or a piece of art or the timber tone.
The useful question to ask yourself is whether you would still like it if you had never seen it anywhere else.
Get the finish right as well as the colour
The same colour in a low sheen and in a matt will read differently, because sheen bounces light and matt absorbs it, so a matt will look slightly deeper and softer. Matt hides an uneven wall better, which matters in an older house. Low sheen wipes clean, which matters in a hallway or anywhere with kids going past.
Come and talk it through
We mix and tint both Haymes and Taubmans to order in the shop, from the ranges we carry, so once you have settled on a colour we can sort the tint and the finish at the same time. Bring a photo of the room on your phone and tell us which way it faces, and we will talk through what that light is likely to do to the colours you are weighing up.
Shop related products
- Taubmans Sample Pot, Neutral 500ml. Enough for two coats on a card, with some left over.
- Taubmans Sample Pot, Accent 500ml. For the deeper and stronger colours.
- Taubmans Sample Pot, White 500ml. Whites vary more than people expect, so sample these too.
- 75mm Mini Tray and Roller Set. The right size for sampling onto card.
- Utility Paint Brush 75mm Synthetic. For cutting in once you have decided.
Have a look through the paint and accessories range for the rest of the gear.
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I am a big believer in living with a painted card for a week, mostly because it is a great deal easier to move a card than a wall.
Cheers,
Candeece
