Second guessing your paint colour choices.

I recently met with a client who was having a terrible time choosing new colours for the exterior of her home. The house is currently white with all the trim being painted white as well, which is a shame because the house was built in the early 1920’s and has some really nice details to it, including brick quoining around the front porch and windows. For those of you who don’t know what quoining is, you’ve probably seen it but didn’t know the term. It’s when large pieces of stone are added, usually on the corner of the house but not always. Give it a Google to find out for yourself.
My client wanted the stucco to be white, again, but wanted to draw some attention to the quoining and some other trim elements. Great! I couldn’t have agreed more.
This client had already gone down the road of purchasing a couple of tester pots to try to help her make a decision, but that didn’t work, so she called me. We both felt it was important to get the quoining right, it’s a bit of a tricky architectural detail and I’ve seen it done really badly in terms of paint colour choices. My client really wanted a soft grey and also some black trim elements. In my world this is about as easy as it gets and by the end of our time together my client was happy with the choices and felt a great sense of relief - and then I left!

This is why I wish I had a magic wand, with one wave of it I would transform the house to its new colours!

The problem is, I don’t have a magic wand, I have to wait for the painters to make it happen. The next morning I had an email from my client, she was worried about the grey colour, would it be too dark? The answer is, no. I talked at length about how important it is to have enough of a difference between two paint colours, if they’re too close they just end up looking the same.
Without sounding unsympathetic, her fears were simply unfounded. She had gone into second guessing and thought she should go out and get a tester pot of the grey.

The problem here isn’t a lack of trust in me as a colour consultant, it’s that my client doesn’t trust herself.

This is a difficult situation for me to deal with because if a person doesn’t trust themselves then there’s nothing I can do to change that and the simple fact of the matter is that it doesn’t matter how many tester pots she goes out and buys, she’s never going to feel confident that she’s made the right choice. What she’s probably going to end up doing is painting herself into even more frustration and confusion. Which is both too bad and totally unnecessary.

Here’s some things to keep in mind when working with a colour consultant.

We know what we’re doing. Okay, maybe you could come across a consultant who doesn’t have a clue, but I’ve been in this business for over twenty years and there’s a whole gallery full of houses that I’ve chosen colours for, if you like my work, then trust me!
I won’t speak for other colour consultants, but I can see the end result. That happens to be my Wayne Gretsky super power, I can envision exactly how it’s going to look after it has been painted and therefore I’m not going to choose colours that don’t work.
During a consultation I spend a great deal of time giving my clients information as to what happens to a colour when painted over a large surface area, I explain to them how there needs to be at least a 20% difference in tonality for the eye to understand and see those differences in colour.

My heart goes out to this client because I know she’s agonizing over something that is perfectly fine the way it is.

Sometimes people get stuck in how things look, they get attached to the faded and dirty paint colours they’ve been living with for years.

It’s important to be open to change, I know that’s easier said than done, but nevertheless it’s true. Be open to the fact that you’ve hired a professional for a reason and that person is there to make your house look beautiful. I care about every single home I work on, I want it to be the best possible version of what my client tells me they’d like to have.
As a professional I’m there to keep you on the right track and prevent you from making mistakes. If you chose to work with a colour consultant I would say the most important thing is this; were you happy with the colour combination that you saw at the end of the consultation process? If the answer was yes, and in the case of this client, she was very happy with the colours we came up with, then you need to find trust in the process, but more importantly, in yourself.