Start with EVERYTHING else. While to paint or not to paint (to me) is one of the first decisions to make, the actual PAINT is the last decision you should make.

Base it on materials in the space (existing or those you will be adding), bedding, rugs, upholstery.

But you will make your life HARD if you start with painted walls and then have to find the stuff to go with it.

As a kid I remember reading a biography of Jacqueline Kennedy that included the tidbit that she found an ashtray so lovely that she wanted to design an entire room around it. I've been inspired by that - walls of paint are triggered by the aqua in a vase or yellow tesserae in a mosaic piece, and we've been superbly satisfied. Find what you love, what makes your heart soar, and then live with it. (By the way, Jason and Michael, lovely and fun place.)

I love what krister says, and I have a hand thrown pot whose colors I plan to use when designing a kitchen remodel.

I've found it is super important to try the paint colors. Although we all abhor home depot, they have lots of samples (BM has relatively few of their colors available in samples). I tried three samples in 3 different places in my house (about 12 inch X 12 inch squares) and I was floored by how different they looked.

That said, my half painted hall has me worried that my gray is too light. I think I will simply start over with a darker shade.

First I select an appropriate color scheme for the room, usually based on something such as a rug, fabric or even a piece of artwork I want to use in that space: This instantly eliminates about 90% of the colordeck.

Then it's just a matter of narrowing it down to the color (another 7% out) then the shade of that color that feels best. I find that selecting a minor color in a multicolored fabric or rug is the most effective way to bring out something that isn't an obvious choice.

If there's no fabric or rug to go from, then I look to the surrounding rooms: If the bedroom is blue then the attached bath will be too - if the living room is brown, then the hallway is as well: It makes the whole feel more spacious and flow together rather than reading like a bunch of smaller chopped up spaces.

Patrick knows what he is talking about - do what he says! Paint can be tweeked to the tiniest degree to be the right complement to a room. And bepsf has a formula there that is right on. That should be all you need!

My husband and I have now painted almost every room in our new house, and we went with an approach pretty much like what patrick (the other one) recommends. We don't really have any good furniture pieces right now to paint around, but we do have brick in a fireplace, bamboo in a floor, etc. Also, while the house doesn't seem like a dark house, it doesn't get fantastic natural light, either, so we've done *a lot* of sample painting to find a color that doesn't end up looking like a sad gray version of itself in our house. (Not that we don't love gray--we picked a shade for one of the rooms.)

If I had beautiful natural light just filling every room, I would probably pick a favorite piece (chair, textile, dish) and design the whole room around that.

I "have a vision" and work from there!

When we built our new house, it was customizing the last house in a small new development -- so we had to go with the contractors our builders used and the constraints given by customizing their plan (from which the base price for the house was established.) One constraint was that everything was to be painted white (one of several whites on a Benjamin Moore chart.) We could add as many colors as we liked, but it would cost $250 per color change. (We presume that's their fee for cleaning the sprayer and setting up again, partly to discourage such frivolity!)

This limited our colors, but not massively. I wanted an "ethereal" pale aqua room with carpeting that fels a bit like tatami mats in color and a lot of white and blues in details -- my take on a Japanese fusion sort of space.

We chose a cafe au lait for the living, dining, and kitchen spaces (open concept) and my partner decided it would be just fine for his room (sea-green carpet) as well. We wanted this color because it's a nice neutral for public areas, worked with our art and furniture, without "matching" any of that.

He wanted a dark red for the home theater (somethign ourside his normal comfort zone, but farily traditional for theaters) and talked me into a pumpkin orange for the family room, adjoining bath, and hall outside the theater leading upstairs. He thought as analogous colors, they would work together.

The master bath suite was painted sort of a faded denim blue to work with my room and his, sort of -- we like blue for bathrooms, a water color.

Everything else was white. After moving in we painted his office a bright apple green and the guest bath a soft sea-glass green.

We knew before we chose chips exactly what we were going for. It was pretty easy for us, once we talked it through.

I've been dreaming of being able to paint. Beige boxes are all I've known for 26 years. I know what colors I always like seeing in the photos on this site so my vision is working with what I have. I'd like to do a celadon green in my living room, gray in the dining room, peacock in the bedroom, and something REALLY bold in the bath.

I've been trying to decide what colors to use in our new house. I started with a couch and then picked up 2 thrift chairs that could easily be reapinted/reupholstered in whatever coordinating colors I chose. When at an estate sale I stumbled onto the perfect vintage chair and I knew immediately what I wanted to do. Now my greatest challenge is getting my husband to let me do it :)

i agree- you really need to work off of what you already have, otherwise you will make yourself crazy and end up wishing you painted the walls a different color.

I just picked a colour that makes me happy. I used to have a yellow room for maybe a year at the longest in high school and I wanted that again. Of course, I will probably need to get different light bulbs (sometimes it's TOO yellow in here) but I don't regret it yet. Needs more work.

You can always paint over it later!

Blah. I tend to decorate on instinct and choose colors similarly.

Rather than believe that there are overly specific rules on style, or try to chase specific trends, I'd rather work with various combinations I enjoy (pale greens and reddish browns, or red and whites, etc...), but to try to remain at least conservative enough that the overall effect aims to seem relatively timeless.

Since style is, to me, a reflection of my own tastes, and about my own comfort with my surroundings, I also consider how the paint the walls are going to react with me. My bedroom, for example, I tend to prefer having a calming color that pretty much fades out of my perceptions, but the living area or dining area I'd prefer to have more dramatic colors: something that reflects its use for showing off a bit and entertaining my guests senses.

Nevertheless, color is never as hard as people make it out to be. The most important thing is to test your colors before painting the whole room. (had just shy of the right shade of green once. Ouch.)

First you need to know and understand your home's architecture, it's space and floor plans,and the style of art, furniture, objects, window treatments, and floor coverings you are working with. A colonial with heavy moldings and rooms that open up to each other (although some walls remain) is a very different spatially than these "great rooms" that new construction boasts.

Know the space, be familiar with the light, or lack thereof. Then search for your most favorite items - that one-of-a-kind Persian rug from ABC Carpet and Home. Pick the one with the palette that resonates with you. Then consider other pieces: will you be paying a pretty penny for custom upholstery on sofas and chairs? Mixing in antiques? Fabrics and textures are more important than ever in picking paint colors. You can find (with a subtle eye of course) almost any paint color that works with your collage of favorite pieces. Just travel with your swatches, floor boards, wood samples, fireplace stone, etc, etc. to your nearest BM dealer. Buy tons of samples and put them up in different areas of the room and look at them over a period of a week or so under different lighting conditions. And by all means, realize that if you have contiguous rooms, the color palette(s) ought to flow from one room to the next. In other words, please don't do a "Jungle Room," then the "Versailles Room," followed by that "Red Dining Room," and a "Country French Kitchen."

I picked a palette of greenish-blues, going from very pale to tiny hits of azure found in my Asian carpet. The wall color (BM Quiet Moments) is nothing other than an ethereal mix of gray, pale blue, pale aqua-green, and a hint of silvery cream. It isn't easy to describe. Accents of gray, golden green (almost olive), small hits cranberry, pale cream that seems infused with sunlight, and a taupe that shifts from pale to tobacco bring the room together. The drapes are a bird and floral chinoiserie print that incorporates these tones. Velvet stripes in the palest watery blue-green and taupe (a Kravet stripe) contrast with that print and the rug. SEveral solid upholstered pieces bring it together. In the adjacent dining room, I had to pick a paint color that was found in my living room - the creamy "sunlight" shade of my velvet sofa found its way onto those walls. With smaller windows and a smaller interior space, a pale wall color lightened up the room considerably. Klismos chairs, upholstered in a similar pale shade of aqua with delicate embroidery, as well as a Robert Allen silk roman shade fabric with a vagely geometric 60s vibe brings the two rooms together.

without going into detail with colour schemes and theories---the easiest method is to start with an anchor piece. could be sofa, rug, whatever. base your colours from this. take a sample of your anchor piece, like a cushion, to the paint store then match the darkest colour in your piece to a paint chip--then from that choose colours based on a colour scheme you prefer. If your anchor piece has a few strong colours- match all of them to paint chips then start eliminating the ones you like least.

You can now get any color Benjamin Moore makes in a pint size. A little more expensive than their samples, but def. worth doing.

Though, for me, it's more of a curse than a blessing. I have about 20 different shades of medium neutral grey/green that I've tried in patches on my living room walls. I could have painted the whole room for the price of the samples, with change left over.

I want a grey/green that looks good with the slate fireplace but it also has to work in a very bright large room - all South and East windows facing green fields with tons of light, but big expanses of dark glass at night. The color is tricky because of the light.

After reading the comments here, I'm thinking of just doing the rest of the room, then choosing a grey/green that works with the rest of it.

Or maybe I'll just pour all the pots together and see what color I come up with.

I just a couple months ago figured out a great trick, if you happen to be a painter or have a painter friend. I wanted to match some colors in my bricks for outside trim paint, so I custom blended my own paint chips to match the actual bricks, and then brought them to the store to see what matched. (I know you can also have them try to match a custom color or an alternate brand.) I was able to find colors that were just about dead-on to my colors. I don't know why I didn't figure this one out earlier...!

Similarly, if you have a friend with strong color abilities (like an artist or designer) bring them over for a consult. Some people can easily envision what a room will look like from a little paint chip, whereas others just can't. And if you're handy in photoshop, it is a great tool to predict what a new color will look like.

Although I sometimes like rooms that are saturated with a strong paint color, I prefer to have the accessories in the room provide the pop, and enjoy a nice, neutral paint color. I recently had my apartment painted very successfully.

The color is BM Feather Down (953), and it is a complex cream that sometimes looks as though it has sunshine coming through it and also has a great deal of gray.

In choosing it, my goal was to match the color of greigy grime that comes into my NYC apartment (bus fumes? I don't know), so that I could hide the grimy.

I am not good at seeing and imagining colors, yet I recently painted my apartment very successfully. I tried 23 different BM sample colors by having them made up at the Janovic store.

I painted different squares of color over months until I found the right one. It looks great; it's restful and vibrant at the same time. It's also very sophisticated and looks expensive.

Although my walls are neutral, my rooms read as green, blue and gray because of the paintings, throws, tapestries and throw pillows I already had.

Many of the rooms I see featured on AT seem very colorful, yet start out with neutral walls. A recent post about Gary Spain (http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/dc/inspiration/bold-color-inspiration-from-gary-spain-128826) is one example.

This is long, but here is my advice:

1) Try out colors in situ and look at them over several days so that you can see them as the light changes.

2) Unless you really, really want an orange or lilac or black room all the time, don't use the paint to provide the color: use the accessories.

I've always wanted to paint each room of a home to reflect a different season, based on the mood I want the room to convey:

Bedroom: autumn -- makes you want to curl up with a quilt and a book

Spare bedroom: winter -- crisp and clean

Bathroom: summer -- make a shower feel like a warm summer rain

Living room: spring -- light, airy and inviting

Kitchen: pull in the greens from the living room to echo the colors of a fresh spring garden

So far, all I have is the autumn bedroom, but it's a start!

I hate looking at the entire BM fandeck. They have strange colors in general...I like colors that are sort of drab. IF it is BM, I can usually go to the historical colors to find good things...most of the colors are great. I like companies like Farrow and Ball or C2 that narrow the choices down a lot to begin with. The big key is to not overthink it.....and go a bit more drab with your background paint color (perhaps you don't want to only notice the walls) and keep in mind the fun accessories and the fun people that will be in the rooms.