Color is a strange beast.Look closely at the walls in any room and you'll notice that the colors appear differently in different parts of the room. A reflection here, a shadow there; sometimes you'd swear that the color on one wall is nothing at all like the one next to it, when in fact they are the same. Color is a product of light. If a tree falls in the woods it makes a sound whether someone hears it or not. The tree's leaves are green, however, only if there is light present.
I recently painted a piece of furniture for a client. When I delivered it we noticed that sunlight reflecting off of a lush green back yard threw an olive cast over one side of the room and changed the piece's color. Even the woody brown grass cloth wall covering was effected. You would have thought that two mismatched lots of grass cloth were used. A room that looks out onto a street will flash subtly but noticeably warmer in tone when a school bus passes.
Light is the bull you must wrestle when choosing a color for space. Painting a dozen one foot square color samples next to each other on a wall is like using every leftover vegetable you have in a soup and then trying to pick out the taste of the parsnips.Staples sells packs of 10 poster boards for about five dollars.These make great sample boards as you can move them around the room.
When a color seems promising paint out the smallest wall and have a look.
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Have fun painting.
