How to Plan Paint Colours for a Whole House

Choosing a colour for one room is hard enough. Choosing colours for a whole house can feel overwhelming, and many people end up with rooms that look fine on their own but clash where they meet. A whole-house colour plan solves that: a short list of colours that work together, a few rules for where they go, and samples tested in your own light before anything is painted.

Start with what stays

Begin with what you are not changing: floors, kitchen counters, the stone around a fireplace, large furniture, and outside, the brick, roof and stone. These fixed colours lean warm or cool, and your paint colours should lean the same way. A cool grey next to warm oak floors can look flat; a warm white next to grey stone can look yellow.

Most neutral paint colours also have an undertone: a slight lean towards yellow, pink, green or blue. It is hard to see on a chip and easy to see on a wall. Hold samples right against the floor, the counters and the fireplace, and the undertone that fits usually becomes clear.

Choose a short palette

Most houses only need a handful of colours:

• One main wall colour for the connected spaces: hallways, the living room and the dining room.
• One or two lighter or darker variations for rooms that stand on their own, such as bedrooms and an office.
• One colour for trim and doors throughout the house.
• A ceiling colour, usually a flat white.
• One accent colour, used sparingly: a front door, a feature wall, a powder room.

A short palette is easier to live with, easier to touch up and easier to paint well. If your trim and doors are stained wood, this is also the moment to decide whether to keep them or paint stained trim and doors white.

An example for a two-storey house

• Front hall, living room and dining room: the main wall colour, carried through without a break.
• Kitchen: the main colour, or a variation of it that suits the cabinets and counters.
• Stairwell and upstairs hallway: the main colour again, so the house reads as one when you look up the stairs.
• Bedrooms and office: a shade lighter or darker than the main colour, or a soft colour that leans the same warm or cool way.
• Basement: a lighter version of the main colour, tested under the lamps you will actually use.
• Trim, doors and ceilings: one trim colour and one ceiling white throughout.
• Accent: the front door or the powder room.

Decide where colours change

Colours look best when they change at natural stopping points: a door frame, an inside corner, the turn of a stair. Open-plan spaces read as one room, so keep one wall colour across them and save accents for walls that stand apart. Hallways and stairwells tie the house together, and a calm, consistent colour there lets each room have its own character.

Try not to change colour on an outside corner or partway along a wall. The line is hard to keep crisp there, and it shows from both rooms at once.

Test colours in your own light

The same colour looks different in every room. North-facing rooms get cooler, softer light all day, south-facing rooms are warm and bright, and basements depend almost entirely on lamps. Put samples on the walls of each room, look at them in the morning, afternoon and evening, and compare them next to the trim colour. Our guide to bedroom colours goes further into light and finish.

Make each sample at least the size of a sheet of paper. Because the main colour runs through several spaces, test it in the darkest and the brightest room it will go in. If you like it in both, it will usually work in the rooms in between.

Match the sheen to the room

Colour and sheen work together. Flat paint hides flaws and suits ceilings, eggshell and satin are easier to wipe in busy rooms and hallways, and semi-gloss stands up to handling on trim and doors. Our paint sheen guide explains each finish.

The same colour can look different in a different sheen, so test samples in the sheen you plan to use. Keep one sheen on all the walls of a room, too: a touch-up in a different sheen shows as a dull or shiny patch.

Bring the outside into the plan

If the exterior is part of the job, choose its colours with the brick, roof and stone, and with the street. Our guide to choosing exterior paint colours in Toronto explains how.

The front door is often the easiest place for a stronger colour, because it is small and simple to repaint later. Condo townhouses and some neighbourhoods have rules about exterior colours, so check before you choose.

Colour plan mistakes to avoid

• Choosing each room on its own, from small chips under store lighting.
• Using several slightly different whites for trim; they look mismatched where rooms meet.
• Picking a cool grey for a north-facing room, where it can feel cold.
• Ignoring the undertones of the floors, counters and stone.
• Using so many strong colours that the house feels busy and is harder to touch up.
• Leaving the colour decisions until after the quote, when changes can affect the price and the schedule.

Keep a record

Once the colours are chosen, write down the brand, colour name and finish for every room. When a wall gets scuffed, or you repaint one room in a few years, you will know exactly what to buy. On every job we keep that record for you.

Set it out room by room, with a line each for the walls, ceiling, trim and doors. Store any leftover paint labelled by room, so small touch-ups match.

Planning the colours with a painter

A colour plan is part of every custom house painting project we do: we help you settle colours and finishes room by room, put sample patches on your walls, and write the plan into your quote. If you are painting the whole house, our guide on how to plan a whole-house paint job covers the rest of the project.

Book a free estimate and we will help you plan the colours for your whole house, anywhere in Toronto and the GTA.

Questions