I almost always color match something in the room. Whether it be a color from a fabric (like window treatments or bedding) that I have them scan or a piece of artwork, etc. I have lugged the most random things to the paint dept at Home Depot. It always works, though! The other thing I try to remember is keeping the color on our walls in the same saturation.

It has to complement the floor since that is hardest to change. Also I wait until seeing what the sample looks like in different lighting (including natural).

After looking at some great rooms from AT, I chose Restoration Hardware's silver sage to paint one of the rooms in the house but it didn't give the room that warm feelings it once had. I painted the same color in a small powder room and for some reason, this color looks so much better...

i find a color family that i'm interested in for that room, procrastinate for months until i can't stand it...then head to the home improvement store and pick the first one that looks appealing. even if i get it home and decide it's not quite right, i leave it as-is and work around it.
like our living room color was supposed to be more grey but it turns out it looks more blue with our lighting/windows. i'm dealing with it and moving on.
i know that if it took me months to choose a color and actually paint, there's no way in hell i'm going to go through the process of priming over it and painting all over again. it's not worth it to me.

I use the same steps as the author but always paint part of the wall white before painting the sample colors on the wall. I learned that tip/trick the hard way when trying to pick out a greige color for our living room and I painted my sample colors directly onto a yellow-hued tan. It really impacted how the new colors appeared and I selected a color that I disliked once all the walls were painted and that awful tan was covered. Ended up repainting the room.

I usually pick a color family from an inspiration photo and then take a carpet sample with me (if it's an upstairs room, we have wall-to-wall carpet) and a paint chip of the trim color and see what goes. Then I buy a sample. I'll admit, we have too many samples (not crazy, but more than we need) but that really determines the choice for me.

OR I find a room I love, and match the wall color exactly. That's worked well in my son's room, the guest room, the living room, the kitchen and our office.

Short answer? "Blindly."
Not that I'm blind. Why would I care about paint color if I were?
Reading blogs like this, I know what kinds of colors I like, and most of the time, I know what kind of light the room I'm painting gets.
My most recent paint job was in my new basement apartment. I knew that it wouldn't get a lot of light - the bedroom has one window (and we've redone the window since painting 7 weeks ago), and the living room only has artificial light. I have a friend who works at a paint shop, and I said "I want a sunny beige in the living room, and a warm grey in the bedroom." I decided on light-colored neutrals because a) it's a basement, and 2) I'm a renter and wanted the space to be a blank canvas for me and whatever happens next. The colors turned out lovely, and I can't wait to see what the living room looks like with the new lighting!
The time before this was painting my old bedroom at my Mom's house. I had very specific colors in mind for the room - cool and springy green for the walls, blonde wood, beige and white for the accents with occasional sprigs of pink. So we went to get paint and - on a whim! - picked out a pumpkin orange! And it's lovely. I still have my collection of Breyer horses there, and they're well-accented by the warm pumpkin-pie-colored walls. The room is so warm and cozy now - a cooler color might not have worked. My mom and sister ended up painting her (my sister's) old room in green, and it works well for her south-facing window.
And then we get to how we're picking colors for Mom's room. She also is on the south side, and has a lot of earth-toned accents. Hers is the only unpainted room in the whole house, and she isn't huge on repeated colors. My sister and I are redoing her room this year, and we thought, "You know what would be super-feminine and gorgeous in that room? GREY." Except Mom's more of an earth-toned girl. We spent hours on various paint websites before finding the perfect two tones of grey that are still grey, but with just enough stone and slate in them that they'll fit in perfect with what she has.

I'm all about gut instinct. And to date, I've only had one room where it didn't really work out. For all the rest, I narrowed down to a few swatch cards and then picked one. It's always worked for me. The only color that was tricky was grey. I picked and painted two shades only to find it was either too purple or too cool (not the warm, brown-grey I envisioned) and then totally switched direction to chocolate brown.

It's really good to have read this because I'm about to move into a new home, where our floors are hardwood in the living spaces, carpet in the bedrooms, red tiles in the kitchen, and I forgot what the bathrooms have but they're also tile. My husband and I will make selections on paint eventually and it's good to see how people manage to decide on their living spaces' colors, so that we could see what works for us.

i just go with my instinct. I have painted some really wild colors and lived with them for 2 or more years and then repainted...looking at your photo gave me a chuckle...i painted my master bath ice cubed silver...loved it so much i painted my family room the same color a few years later. Bathroom reads grey...family room reads more blue. Not a single person has ever guessed they are the same color!

When my husband and I picked out our main house color we did just what you described. Mostly paying attention to how the color looked next to our floors. We didn't try to rush it either, in fact the 4 finalist squares we painted on the walls are still there. I don't want to do this again for several years so we're making sure we REALLY like that color!

We usually try to choose a color(s) that shows off, and compliments the art in our house.

Those grey colors you've featured are just lovely, by the way!

One thing we take into account is the light level in that room. If it is a bright room, we can go with a dark color. If it's a dark room, we'll use a lighter color. We find dark colors in dark rooms too depressing.

My process is a bit like is written here, except perhaps a bit less elaborate. It depends. I usually start out with an idea of the color then when I find the one that I like I just know. We have RH Silver Sage in our bedroom, which I love and Behr off white in the bathroom and closet. Silver Sage is a color my boyfriend loves so that didn't require much thought. Our floors upstairs are hickory and a brown tile in the bathroom so the paint choices worked well with both.

I originally wanted to paint my office a bright teal but the realized that living with it daily would be too much so opted for Behr Russian blue with Swiss coffee trim. Most of the downstairs is Behr iced mint. I had originally wanted a darker green but the tile throughout the downstairs has a lot of dark grey in it and the kitchen has seal grey by Glidden on the cabinets with a black mosaic tile backsplash, so it really needed lightening up. I can't remember what color we used in the downstairs bathroom. The ceilings and trim are all Swiss coffee. When we were building I had a drawer full of pain chips and samples which saw a lot of action.

Depends--if there's stuff in the room I can't (easily) change, I go from that. For instance, when repainting my kitchen (with blonde cabinets, terracotta floors, dull teal counters, and stainless appliances), I didn't feel like I had a lot of choices. Had to get rid of the hideous adobe color left by the prior owners, but had to stick with something light, neutral, and warm that wouldn't clash or compete--I just did a very very light buttery yellow/cream on the walls, with trim a few shades lighter yet (almost white). The room is still not my favorite, but it no longer offends the eyes too badly.

Otherwise, I just go with what I like. Both nurseries I painted in the last few years got shades of blue, since I was starting from scratch, and that's my favorite color (for my girl and my boy). My living room will soon be converted from a sagey green (again, previous owners) to a light greige, since I like it and it will work with our current furnishings, woodwork, etc. Where I really go crazy is picking the particular shade. I get every swatch known to man, look for images on the internet in that color to see how it might work in a whole room, and prime a small section of the wall and then paint various samples and live with it for a few days if possible to see which is the closest to what I imagined.

I'm interested in hearing what the paint color was from Domino magazine :-)

I rely on instinct as well but I do agonize over the instinct for a few weeks before actually biting the bullet. I am moving into a new place next week & have been carrying around a homemade swatch palette I made using a key ring, a hole punch, & a few shades of each color I am contemplating.

Another thing that is important to keep in mind, is how you accessorize. You have to think about if the WALL color will be the "accessory", if your furniture is going to lend the pop of color, or if the decorations will be the items that neutralize & balance out the room. Otherwise you are going to end up with rainbow bright!

I choose an inspiration piece, check the paint chips and then paint sample swatches onto canvas paper from the art store. I've found that the colors online or on the chip bear little or no resemblance to the actual color of the paint. I usually go through at least 5 color samples before finding "the one". Luckily, I don't paint too often!

I painted my living room yesterday (Foam by Eddie Bauer) and am uneasy with the results. I tested it on the wall and thought it was fine, a barely discernible cool blue, but my test wall gets a lot of direct light. In more shadowy place in the room it looks a lot bluer. I have an urge to re-paint immediately, but I'm going to live with it a bit, wait until I've brought in a new rug and sofa slipcover that I've been planning, and see how I feel then.

I used to obsess over it, doing the whole paint chips and samples thing, then our budget changed drastically, and I started using mistints. I did end up with a couple I wasn't thrilled with, but most turned out really well, and when I was patient, I could get something very close to what I wanted.

Last time I painted, I used full spectrum paints and did a color consultation OVER THE PHONE with Ellen Kennon. She picked a lot of colors I would never have considered and steered me toward colors that are warmer than what I usually use. I used everything she suggested except in my kitchen (orange) where I went with her second suggestion (green) instead... I am in the process of repainting the kitchen orange, but we love everything else.

We had painted the living room (BM palladian blue) shortly before I talked to her, so I didn't have her consult on that room because we wanted to leave it the way it was. I couldn't stand it once everything else was painting though, because even though it was pretty, it looked very cold and uninviting.

I ended up repainting it a coral color we chose off a single 2x3 inch card. I did obsess a bit over whether to do coral, but in the end, we're happy that we went with our first instinct rather than choosing a "safer" option.

I am an artist - painter originally - so I am good at mixing colors accurately and have loads of paints on hand. If I am trying to choose a color to *go with* something (woodwork, fabric, etc) I start by painting a color chip myself and then take that into the store to find a match. But I am embarrassed to admit how many decades it took me to figure out this simple, obvious step for myself! And most people would not consider this a viable option - but if you're going to ask an artsy friend for help, this might be one method! I will admit, though, this doesn't really work for whites - the subtleties are too delicate. It's best to grab a whole bunch of paint chips and check them out in the room and at different times of the day.

I usually play around with an online color visualizer (I usually use Sherwin Williams) until I figure out about what shade I want. Then I'll get a few chips that are close and compare them in the room. I don't usually spend a lot of time agonizing, I'm usually pretty content with my gut instinct.

I follow pretty much the same process as the author, but when I've narrowed my choices I grab multiple chips of the same color and put them on the various walls in the room. If I can't get the bigger chips, I put 4 or so of the same color on each wall with poster tape to see how the light at all times of day affects the look of the paint from wall to wall. I sometimes mount the chips on a piece of white paper and then tape that to the wall. Then, when I think I've made a decision I paint the sample on poster board, leaving a white border, rather than painting directly on the wall, as it's sometimes a pain to eliminate the sample patch, depending on the depth of color.

Oh, and if there's a transitional space from room to room, I might try mixing the two paint colors together to make a third color that works with both. This can be lightened if necessary but the undertones will blend.

I look at a lot of paint sample chips and LOT of blogs (like AT). That helps me decide what style and color family I'm going with. Most recently we had to repaint the entire house due to smoke damage from a fire. I knew I wanted white, but was unable to go in and paint and test colors because the house was closed up for so long, the walls were smoke-damaged, and the painting was scheduled to be done at a specific time. So, I obsessively read blogs and comments and found the perfect white paint to suit our 1940 cottage. BM White Dove. I love it. It works beautifully and differently in each room. I don't know what I'd have done without AT, etc.

I just don't change them! When we built, my partner and I talked about what we thought we wanted to do in each room, considering flow between spaces -- and the fact the painters charged $250 every time we added a color! (for cleaning their sprayer or something...) (We wound up painting a couple of small rooms ourselves.)

I picked a pale aqua for my room, a light denim blue for the bathrooms, a basic off white for halls and other general spaces, and a cafe-au-lait for the living and dining rooms, as well as the adjacent lav and his room. He picked a deep red for the home theater, and pumpkin orange for the adjacent family room, bath and hallway. Later the home office was painted apple green. We looked at paint chips with an idea of what we thought we'd like, chose one, and went with it. No angst, second guessing, or changes and we are very happy with our choices -- which I have no plans to change, ever! (Ask me agian in ten years!)

We tried all of those exact same shades of gray on our walls when we painted last year! We went with sidewalk gray and I love it. I use the same technique for picking a colour, except I think I only narrowed it down to 3 or 4 shades before painting a sample directly on the wall.

We just started painting the interior of our condo. My soon-to-be hubby & I have different approaches: I go by instinct (how does the color make me feel; does it set the right mood for the room?), while he grabs a million paint chips. We went with my original selection and have been happy thus far. I'm not a crafty person, but now I have a ton of paint chips and feel guilty about trashing them. :(

We research grays for a while.
Bought a sample (Benjamin Moore Harbor Gray.) Painted a poster board for a sample.
Lived with it for a week.
Saw a picture of a room I loved online.
Bought a gallon of Terrapin Green.
Went with that.

Angst. Research. Questioning. Whim. Happiness.

Paint the entire room and then paint over when it sucks. I've tried painting bits of the wall, large parts of the wall, painting with those photo programs on paint company web sites. None of that works. I lived through three really bad mistakes, but know what tones work now.

ha, usually the hard way. I have painted a dark brown bathroom which looked very bad, and immediately painted it back to the pale green go-to color, and a kitchen dark brown twice, finally hitting on the right shade that was what I wanted. If its a big room, like the living room though, I now know to stop at one wall and let it sit for a week before continuing.

I get a million samples, do some color matching, get testers and paint 3 boards with each color in wide stripes. I mount those on different walls, since in some rooms the light's coming from different directions at different times of day, then over several days I cross out the ones that really don't work. For the final choice I stock up on wine, get good and toasted, then choose whichever one I can see through the vino haze!

ha Rucy...I did that when painting stripes on a kitchen wall..eventually I called them..french rustic...as if i intennnded them to look all handpainted and 'whimsical'..no one ever questioned it...oh..and the shade of green was perfect...anyway.

i like the small containers of paint from benjamin moore. but i spend WAY too much time deciding on shades of a color. i tried stonington + silver fox too: http://1088churchill.blogspot.com/2011/04/paint.html (went with stonington)

I have a loft, not rooms, so everything gets painted at once. It is expensive so I don't change colors too often. That also rules outdoors likely to go out of style before I repaint, like all the greys and brownish greys.

I know that I like warm neutral colors to display my art collection and that the room faces south, so that limits the color range.

I then get a million swatches, testers, which don't look like the swatches, and then narrow to 2 colors. I paint several good sized samples on watercolor paper, tape them on walls around the place, make corners, and then watch them across days in various lighting conditions.

BTW. If you're painting light over dark, primer tinted the same color as the paint could save you a coat.

The hardest part for me is picking the color family. I have learned that what is amazing, perfect, stunning in the living room is flat out wrong in a bedroom. That "wow" blue in the bathroom would make me crazy in the kitchen. But I want the house to be cohesive, not a mish mash crazy quilt of colors.

We painted a lovely sage green in the hallway outside our master, but then chose an equally lovely deep red for the bedroom. I love both, but when the door to the bedroom is open I just see "Happy Holidays!" So now I'm tending more toward neutrals all over and using other stuff to bring the color in. Playin' it safe.

Paint color is probably one of the most important decisions I make when redoing a room. I just painted my LR, DR and kitchen the same color (all one long room). We researched a lot in magazines and on AT beforehand to determine a color palette, then wound up choosing BM Nimbus after painting several swatches on the walls. I like to paint a large swatch several feet high and in different areas when doing a large room to see how it looks in different light.

We probably spend more than $200 on sample cans of paint, but it was worth it, and I later gave the samples away on Craigslist.

Very useful post, thanks.

I used to spend endless amounts of time looking at chips and painting boards with sample colours. Once I got started painting in one room, though, the colours all sort of worked themselves out, and I don't have to think very hard about it at all. It's like clothing shopping - I just know "my" colours. Sometimes (if I'm patient enough), I find a terrific mistint. And I just painted my bedroom based on a colour chip I found at the hardware store and had made up immediately. It's absolutely perfect and I love it!

First I did some research online to learn about color theory and light reflectance. From there, I scoured online for ideas, then used your methods of dozens of paint chips.

This was my first time doing this scientifically, but I absolutely love the results! http://bonnieprojects.blogspot.com/2012/08/choosing-paint-colors.html