Tag Archives: choosing colors

The Little Old Man Who Blended In

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Happy Old ManOK, years ago, I was working at the Lakewood RepcoLite and a lady came in with her husband. She pulled him–nearly dragged him–to the color chip rack and started holding up color chips to his face.

Well, this isn’t something we usually see and so I watched for a second, trying to figure out what was going on. One after another, she’d hold up a chip and then look at it, squint, turn her head from side to side and then toss the chip aside in disgust. Over and over.

I watched for a few seconds, still completely confused about what was happening, and then I walked over and asked if I could help.

Well, the little old man kind of put his head down like he was embarrassed, and his wife launched into a long explanation. And slowly, as I listened, things started to make sense. On a very limited scale–but still, at least I understood what was happening.

See, apparently, this poor little old man had just had his study at home remodelled and repainted. And unfortunately, the new paint blended in perfectly with . . . him. Yes. I’m not making any of this up. The paint blended in so well with the little old man that his wife told me she could never tell if he was sitting at his desk or not. He simply blended away into the wall color.

Well, I listened to her and then looked at the little old man. I think he was doing his best to blend in with the color behind him right then.

But the woman wasn’t done yet. She carried on with her story and concluded by telling me that she needed to find a color that accented him–a color that complimented and coordinated with her husband without blending in with him. And then, she dropped the big pressure bomb on me. She said, “That’s why I came to RepcoLite. Because I want the right color.”

Well, suddenly at that point, I was thrust into a much more complicated scenario than I’d previously realized. I had to find a color that would look great with a little old man. I had to stand in the store and hold color chips up to his little, wrinkled, humiliated face. Do you know how embarrassing that is? How awkward?  For both of us?

But regardless of all of that, I persevered. I asked questions I couldn’t believe I was asking. I asked him what color clothes he usually wears. I leaned in close and tried to determine his eye color. I wanted to ask if he was always this pale or if it was because he was just nervous. But before I could ask, his wife told me. “He’s not always this pale. He’s just nervous.” Then she hit his arm and told him to stop being nervous and start coloring up to his normal tone. “Or else,” she continued “we’re going to have the same problem as before–the color won’t be right.”

Well, we worked on it for a while and finally, I ended up just custom matching a color. We sent them on their way and I waited. I didn’t have long to wait. About a day or so later, I got a phone call from the woman. She was ecstatic. She told he that her husband was sitting at his desk right now–and that she could see him sitting there from the other room. All because the color of the wall behind him was perfect. It brought out the color of his eyes without blending too perfectly with his skin. She thanked me profusely and hung up happy.

And all that to answer some common questions folks have: namely, how do I get the right color? How do I know what is the right color? What can I bring in for a color match?

The answer to all of these questions is simple. You get the right color by coming to RepcoLite. You know what the right color is by talking with our color experts and letting them help you. And, in answer to “what can I bring in for a color match?” . . . well, I’d like to ask you to surprise us. We’ve matched cups of dirt, a handfull of leaves, flower petals, dining room chairs, magazine photos, sectionals from public restrooms, toilet seats and one embarassed little old man. See if you can come up with something crazier–we love the challenge and it always makes for a great story.

8 Easy Ways to Increase Curb Appeal

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curb_appeal_test2Increasing the curb appeal of your home doesn’t need to be a paint project that lasts all summer long–you don’t need to paint your entire home in order to bump up it’s appearance. Oh, that always helps–and really, nothing will accomplish a complete renewal of your home than a new paint job–but it’s not always necessary. Here are 8 sure-fire ways–easy ways–to increase the visual “pop” of your home:

FRONT DOORS: Your front doors can offer you a great opportunity to say something unique and interesting about your home. Many folks fall back on a safe standard–a maroon or a forest green–but don’t let that be the case with your home. Branch out a little. Be a little daring. Go with a bright green, a bold red, a warm yellow. It’s a small area in the grand scheme of things–after all, a front door is basically 21 square feet. So, it’s a drop in the bucket when you think about the entire exterior of your home. But this little drop can have some impact if you pick the right color!f

GARAGE DOORS: Another surface that gives you a great opportunity when it comes to exterior decorating are your garage doors. Take a look at yours and see if there’s a way to infuse some color into that surface. And really, don’t feel you have to paint the whole thing one big, bright, bold color. You could paint it a slightly darker color than the rest of your trim and then use either a lighter or darker color yet to accent the different raised panels in the door. There are any number of creative things you could try–our point here is to just open your mind to the possibilities. Don’t look at that door as just a big hunk of metal that hides the opening of your garage! Look at it as a canvas–a place to throw some color and increase the visual appeal of your home.

SHUTTERS: Most of our homes have shutters. And most of us have painted those shutters the same color as we’ve painted our front doors. And really, that’s not necessarily bad. But, don’t always assume that there are no other options. Look at your shutters and try to imagine what a color darker or lighter than your door color would do. What would another color altogether add? Shutters don’t take up a lot of space and so a bright, bold color that WORKS with your other colors can infuse some significant life into a boring exterior.

LIGHT POSTS and RAILINGS: This is one of my favorite ideas–mainly because its just something I’ve never really given much thought to before. See, most of us spend time thinking about the colors we’ll put on our doors or our siding that we never really give much thought to extraneous things like railings and light posts. Oh, we figure we’ll just accent them in white or maybe black depending on the rest of the color scheme, but rarely do we ever give them much consideration on their own. So break out of that mindset. Give some thought to your railings and your lightposts. What colors could you put on those surfaces that would really infuse your home with interest?

LAWN FURNITURE: The fifth item we’re going to talk about is something that’s not permanently affixed to your home: lawn furniture. Many of us have Adirondack chairs or other items like this that take up a place of prominence on our yards. They are usually more practical than decorative–they’re the places we hang out and relax over the summer months. But just because they’re practical doesn’t mean that they can’t be decorative as well. Rather than rely on the standard white, why not branch out into some bold colors, some bright colors . . . some fun colors? Because these aren’t permanent items, you can move them, put them away for the winter, etc. So, don’t be afraid to go bold with your colors.

FLOWER BOXES: Not every house has flower boxes attached beneath the windows anymore. But for those of you who have these, don’t forget that they can be used not just to carry a bunch of color in the form of flowers! They can also be painted with interesting colors to add a little excitement to the big blank exterior of your home. Because these are small, you can paint them easily and, if you put some time and thought into the color selection AND the flowers you plant in them . . . you could have an amazing summer result! So don’t overlook them.

WINDOW TRIM: This one’s an obvious choice, but again, so often, we overlook it on our own homes. So many times, we assume that trim needs to be either dark brown or white. But that’s not the case. Oh, you want to be a little careful with your color choices because painting window trim isn’t the most exciting or pleasant project out there . . . but don’t be afraid to stretch your boundaries a little. Sometimes a slightly darker or lighter version of your siding or your front door accents can really “class-up” an exterior. So don’t just settle on the standards–think bigger!

OUT BUILDINGS: One last area that we’re going to cover in this article is your outbuildings. You know, those little sheds we’ve all got crammed full of lawnmowers and kids toys. Most of us paint them very conservatively. We turn them into little tiny duplicates of our homes–same colors, same look. Or, we branch out a little and coat them with a nice, safe white. Or, maybe a wood-colored stain. Well, I’m not saying it’s the right answer for everybody, but for some of us, a bold color on a building like this can create a huge splash of visual interest for the exterior of your home. And by “bold”, I don’t mean it has to be red or bright green. It could be a deep, navy blue. It could be a charcoal building with lime-green highlights. It could be anything. Think about it!

Well, you get the idea. The point is this: think big! Be bold with your color choices and be creative with the surfaces you decide to paint. Small surfaces on and around your home can be painted quickly and easily for very little money. But these same surfaces, when coated with the perfect color, will slow traffic and walkers as they pass your house. They’ll take a look. And they’ll go home and they’ll start looking for ways to add interest to their exteriors!

So You’re Keeping Your Couch: Decorating With “Leftovers”

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couch_testLeftovers. We all usually have them when we do some new decorating in our homes. Typically, it’s a rare occurrence when someone gets to decorate a room without such limitations. What I mean is this: normally, there’s always something that’s going to “carry over” into your new decorating. Not often are you completely removing and replacing everything: carpet, bedding, wall hangings, furniture. Usually, some of these items remain and these things, in a sense, tie your hands. They limit your creativity. They limit you. Or do they?

In reality, (and against what seems like common sense), these limitations usually make it easier for you to come up with a decorating scheme. And the reason is simple: when you’ve got no limitations, no boundaries, then that means that everything, every color, is fair game. And many times, this utter freedom results in a paralysis. There are so many colors we could choose that many folks have no idea where to start. Nothing is off the table and so, as a result, we’ve got thousands of options that leave us spinning our wheels.

However, when you’ve got limitations–when you have furniture you need to work around, or carpeting–you find yourself with a starting point. Suddenly, there aren’t 3,000 colors available to you. Instead, you’re down to a few hundred at most. This makes choosing much, much easier.

Here’s an example to prove the point:

Imagine two scenarios. In the first one, let’s say that you have a blank slate. You are remodeling a bedroom and you’re replacing everything. No color is off limits. You can pick and choose any combination you want. So you walk into RepcoLite and immediately you’re confronted with a display of over 3000 colors. However, before you pick even one of those colors, remember something: the colors need to match the bedspread you haven’t purchased yet. Also, they need to work with the furniture you don’t own yet. And the carpet you haven’t even shopped for. Now, of course, you could start with the carpet and the furniture, but remember that these things are going to have to end up working well with paint colors you really like.

Now, even with this brief look at the complete room-remodel project, we can see that while it’d be fun to start from scratch, it would also be complicated. It’s not hard to see why some people get so frustrated and tense when they find themselves in this position: every decision impacts another and nobody wants to make any mistakes. So, often, what happens is a form of paralysis. A slow, tense process of decor and furniture and color and carpet selections.

OK, now imagine the second scenario: you’re remodeling a living room. But in this case, you absolutely HAVE to keep the hand-decorated, crazy throw pillows that your Great Aunt Mill hand-stitched for you. They have such sentimental value that while everything else can change, these pillows need to be incorporated in the new room.

Now, in this situation, you’re limited . . . but watch how this limitation helps you almost instantly narrow your color possibilities. When you bring the pillow to RepcoLite, we’ll look at it and we’ll start pulling colors that will work. Likely, we’ll present you with some options similar to these:

Rather than find yourself staring at a seemingly endless array of colors and color combinations (as you have in scenario 1), this time, you find yourself faced with a smaller palette of colors. You have purples, blues, tans, yellows, reds and greens to work with. And not just ANY purple or ANY green–no, the color options are very specific if they’re going to match your Aunt Mill’s pillow.

From here, it’s just a matter of sorting through the colors available and selecting the ideal scheme to coordinate in your home. No frustration . . . no painstaking hours spent staring at 1000’s of colors. Quick. Easy. Beautiful.

So, all that to say, don’t be depressed when you find yourself limited by furniture and carpet and even throw pillows from Aunt Mill that are going to remain in your newly redecorated room. Don’t worry that these “holdovers” are going to complicate your decorating and color selection process. They won’t. If anything, they’ll make it easier!

Discover Your Color!

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Choosing colors for an upcoming remodel project can seem like a complicated, frustrating, sometimes painful ordeal. And what’s worse, so often after we finish a decorating project and finally choose the colors we want . . . we find out later that we really don’t like them all that much after all. And we end up repainting and doing the whole thing again.

Well, that’s frustrating, but there’s an easy way around this problem. There’s an easy, almost painless way to make sure you end up with the best possible color choices when the time comes for you to actually do some painting: You just need to make a color folder.

Listen to Our Segment!

Listen to the RepcoLite Home Improvement Show segment about creating a color folder here!

Like It? Clip It and Add It!

A color folder is simply a three-ring binder (or maybe even a manila folder) that you fill with every magazine clipping, color chip and store ad that catches your eye. If you find a faucet you really like in a Sunday Flyer–and if you’ve got a bathroom project coming up in the next few months–clip it out and toss it in the folder. If you find a room scenario in a magazine–a great color combination on the walls–cut it out and put it in the folder. If you find a paint color that you fall in love with in the hardware store while you’re picking up nails for another project, throw it in the folder. Even if it’s just a photo with colors you can take your eyes off, put it in the folder.

Do a Little Pruning From Time to Time

As time goes by, never stop adding to your folder. But, of equal importance, never stop sifting OUT of your folder all of the things that you find yourself no longer drawn to.

See, over time, many colors and combinations will catch your eye. Trendy colors will seem bold and daring and you might throw them in your folder. Other trends will find their way in there initially. However, as you maintain your folder over the months, you’ll find yourself looking through those pictures and your initial attraction to those trends will fall away. When that happens, throw those pictures out. Remove everything that no longer appeals to you while at the same time adding in anything new that does.

If you do this in the months preceding a big remodel or even a bedroom repaint, what you’ll be left with, in the end, is a folder full of the colors you TRULY and SINCERELY are drawn to. The fads, the trends, the stuff that looked good when you had a stomach full of spicy food, will be long gone.

Discover Your Colors

When you flip through the folder after a few months of maintaining it, you should see a general color scheme starting to develop. You may not have narrowed your colors down to a specific brown and green and blue combination . . . but you’ll likely have narrowed it down to a GENERAL brown, green and blue (or whatever) palette. You’ll still have to work to fine tune EXACT colors, but at least, when you stand in front of the color display at RepcoLite, you won’t have 3,000 options staring you in the face. You’ll know that 2900 of those options are colors you don’t want. You’ll know that of the remaining 100 colors, 80 are too light or too dark. In the end, because you put in the time with the color folder, you’ll find yourself choosing between only a handful of colors. And best of all, you’ll know that the color you finally choose for the walls of your home will be a color you love. It won’t be a trend you developed a passing attachment to or a fad that caught your interest. It will be the real deal. And because of that, you’ll love it.