Choosing paint colours

We have bought a new house and the builders will paint the rooms in whatever colours we choose - we just have to make sure they are Dulux ones because that's what they use. I have bought loads of testers and tried them on plain white A4 paper but I don't think this is going to work. As far as I know, the painters won't be using an undercoat, so any paint I choose will be going straight on to plastered walls, which obviously aren't white. Someone told me that if I try them on cardboard that would more closely mimic the results of painting on plasterboard, but I'm not sure about this. Obviously, the builders aren't going to let me on the site to put testers on the walls!!

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Ballymagash

hi Ballymagash

You can always try replicating it on some other wall (where you can easily paint over it)

Alternatively, if you can get your hands on a digital camera and upload a picture of a room similar to your own, you can mess around with colour schemes on the Dulux website (http://www.dulux.co.uk). Even if you don't have a digital camera, they have lots of room templates that you can paint to your heart's content!

Hi Ballymagash

I'm trying to decide on colours too at the moment and like you don't have access to the house yet. Found this on the BBC website and there's lots of information about colour theory. I also borrowed Laurence Llewellyn Bowen's Design Rules book from the library which gives some similar advice. Mind you some of his work has been pretty scary! For all the advice though, I can't help feeling that regardless of the amount of research I do, that I just don't know for sure what it will be like until it's done unfortunately.

On sueellen's link there's some info about better quality paints like Colourtrend.

If you come up with any other info let me know.

Rebecca

Hi there,

Recently moved into our new house and the Magnolia colour throughout the whole place drove me demented so decided to paint at least the sitting room.
Decided to go for green. Bought at least 10 testers - tested them on cardboard and reviewed them in every light possible. After 3 weeks finally decided for one and: It's completely different then on the cardboard and about 5 shades darker.
Have come to the conclusion that you can only really test in on the actual wall.
My sitting room is now like a jungle and a lot smaller then before.

M.

If you can hold off painting for a few months you will get a better feel for the house and how the light/change in seasons affect the tone/mood of a room.Has worked well for us in the past.Any colours than off whites/off whites will make a room look smaller.Thats my two cents worth.

The colour of the plasterboard is not an issue. If they tell you it is, you should offer to paint the place yourself or hire your own painter. It's possible to paint new plasterboard in one coat but I'm not sure if Dulux makes a paint good enough for this and I would personally use 2 or even 3 coats.

Anyhoo, go to a hardware shop and buy a single 4x2 foot plasterboard and use that for your tests. You can then try it out in different lighting conditions. It's very hard to extrapolate to a larger area however and paint ALWAYS looks darker on the wall than you imagined it would from the sample!

Extopia,


Thats a great idea! I never even thought of doing that - I will check out B&Q this week to see if they have plasterboard and try the samples on that.

I'll post back to let everyone know how I get on!

Thanks