How to Buy Colors for Paints
Interior and exterior paints can be made in a variety of colors. Most paints, no matter what brand, arrive at the home improvement store as a base white color. Customers can choose what color and finish they want for a particular project. If you want to paint a room in your house or the entire house, you should know how to buy colors for the paint.
- Decide what you want to paint. Are you going to paint the walls, the ceiling, trim, the inside of the house or the outside of the house?
- Get ideas for paint colors by looking at magazines or online home decor websites. You can also pick an object in your home that you would like to match. For instance, some homeowners want the paint to match the couch or a chair. Kids like having their room painted in Big Bird yellow or Cookie Monster blue.
- Browse websites for major painting companies. These include Behr, Glidden and Benjamin Moore. Look at the variety of colors and narrow your choices to a few colors.
- Visit the paint department of your local home improvement store.
- Look through the wide variety of colors available.
- Take several paper color samples home to see if the color looks good in the room you are going to paint.
- Ask a paint specialist to create the color you have chosen. If you know you want the paint to match a certain color, the specialist can actually use a stuffed animal, piece of cloth or any other object with the color on it. A computerized system takes a picture of the object and matches the paint color identically.
- Choose the paint brand and size. There are a variety of brands available and the size depends on how much you are going to paint. Talk with the paint specialist to help you determine which brand or how much paint you need for your project.
- Watch as the paint specialist puts colors into the paint can.
- Wait patiently or do some other shopping while the paint is being mixed. Mixing a gallon usually takes about five minutes, depending on how much color has been added.
- Check the paint color before leaving the store. Once you purchase paint that has color added to it, you cannot return it. The paint specialist usually puts a small dab of paint on the lid so you can verify the color.
- Pay for your paint at the checkout. There are usually no additional charges for adding colors and mixing paint.