Want Paint Colors That Actually Match? Try This Designer’s Brilliant Trick

While I was flipping through textile designer Rebecca Atwood’s gorgeous new book, The Harmonious Home, I found so much inspiration that I nearly missed an ingenious idea. Atwood’s book explores the connection between landscapes, our homes, and our emotions (an idea that has totally unlocked some decorating inspiration for me). At the time that Atwood was writing the book, she and her family happened to be in the middle of moving into their first home. As a result, her own experience is woven through the book, including one amazing color-planning tip that I’m going to share with you here. 

When Atwood found her now-home, she, her husband, and her 3-year-old daughter had been living with her parents for months. They were ready to get into their own home. “We didn’t have the luxury of going through a long design process,” she told me when we spoke about the book. Among the many decisions she had to make quickly was what colors to paint the walls. “Choosing paint colors is hard — even for me, and I studied color theory in school and think about it every day,” writes Atwood in the book.

However, Atwood developed a unique trick to figure out her wall colors: She mapped the colors directly onto the home’s floor plan. “Before I looked at swatches, I picked out a few words to describe how I wanted our home to feel,” she recalls. Then, she sketched out a loose floor plan and started to move from room to room, picking colors to match the mood and putting those swatches directly onto the floor plan. This turned out to be a brilliant move, as she can see how the whole house palette hangs together instantly just by looking at the floor plan. 

Want to try this idea? Here’s how you can follow her example.

Before you even start to think about color, Atwood suggests picking a few words to describe how you want a space to feel to help you focus. “Mapping out your house helps you think about where you want the mood to be airy and where you want it to be cozy,” writes Atwood in the book. 

Atwood started by looking at the paint colors in fan decks, color chips, and then larger samples from Samplize, which she notes was a handy resource because you can attach them to different surfaces with the adhesive and look at them in different light. Seeing the real paint colors in the space was an important step.

Sketch out your home’s floor plan and then cut out pieces from your sample and lay them onto the paper over the room. “It’s helpful to have something you can remove so you can see how different colors look, if you take one away,” she says.

Before Atwood finalized her color choices, she placed the wallpaper samples and fabric swatches she planned to use up against the colored floor plan. “I made sure the paints really worked with that palette so it felt like a consistent world,” she says.

If you’re looking for more inspiration, the rest of The Harmonious Home is filled with beautiful interiors and advice that makes decorating feel less daunting and more doable.