New paint can mean new life in any home. And it doesn’t even have to be a full on remodel! What if you just painted your lower kitchen cabinets or island? How about updating one feature wall in the bathroom? Think about bringing some drama to the office built-ins with a new coat of paint. Whatever the project is, you need the right interior paints for the job. That means using the right color, the right sheen, and even the right brand of paint. But how exactly do you know which to choose when there are endless offerings at any number of stores? We’re here to guide you through choosing paint colors, finding your favorite paint color combinations, and pointing you to our favorite and most reliable paint brands—the ones professionals like us choose every day!
Ready to start finding inspiration for your next DIY paint project or home refresh? Read on to discover the best in the world of interior paints for your home.
The Basics Of Choosing Your Paint
Choosing the right interior paints can feel daunting at first, but armed with the right information and tools, you should be able to confidently pick the perfect shade for your project or home. Here are a few of our tips for how to choose the right interior paint:
Consider your personal style. Maybe that sounds obvious, but it’s important to take some time and really think about your own aesthetic and personal desires before you start a paint project. Meaning, you don’t want to start painting (or finish!) only to realize that you were following a fad your heart wasn’t in or that you shouldn’t have listened to the nagging friend who told you not to go bold when you knew you could.
Think about the space in relation to the rest of your house. Do you want what you’re painting to stand out or blend in? Both answers can result in beautifully painted interiors, but you need to know what your purpose is before beginning. And it’s especially important if you’re looking to create an eye-catching piece that you find a paint that is complementary to rather than clashes with its surroundings.
Understand paint sheen. Sheen describes the amount of light that dry paint will reflect. Essentially, sheen equals shine. Sheen ranges from completely matte through dull, eggshell, satin, semi-gloss, gloss, and high-gloss. Another thing to note is that higher gloss paints are also easier to clean and therefore find better placement in certain areas of the home (like the kitchen). Eggshell or matte paints feel homier and more calming in a bedroom, say.
Test the paint throughout the entire day. This means you’re going to need a paint sample (or swatches at the very least) to put exactly where the finished piece would really live in your home. You’ll want to see the effect natural and manufactured lights in the space have on the color you’re testing. For instance, some blues can play more purple in certain lights—you’ll want to know that before painting an entire kitchen island that color, of course. (Especially if you’re really not a fan of purple.) This is the painter’s equivalent of ‘measuring twice and cutting once.’ Do not skip this critical step!
Invest in quality paint. Interior paints often follow the rule of ‘you get what you pay for,’ so it’s important to invest in quality paint and understand which areas of a home need to withstand higher levels of wear and tear, including cleaning. (Hint: Cabinets and trim need industrial paint to stand up well to these things!) You should absolutely ask your builder about their preferred industrial paints for the best results. We’ll also introduce you to some of our favorite paint colors a little later on.
Know when to hand the project to the professionals. As handy as many are nowadays, it’s crucial to understand the time, energy, and money that can be wasted by going into a project overly confident in your skills. If you’re a practiced home DIYer, by all means, have a go. But you don’t want to risk uneven finishes, sticky surfaces, drippy runs, or any other painting mishap when it comes to refinishing a beautiful piece of cabinetry in your home. And there’s no harm in enlisting the help of a design professional early on in the process. Cabinet designers are often a valuable and knowledgeable source, and they may just know exactly what the best green paint colors for your office will be without any research from you.
Feeling a little more confident now? Right, then—let’s get to the good stuff.
My Favorite Paint Color Combinations
How do you know which interior paint colors will work best together? And have you even thought about the fact that some combinations may work better in a particular part of the home than another? This is one area where professional guidance (and plenty of pretty inspiration) can really be helpful when choosing paint for your home.
Some of our favorite paint color combinations? How about black and white in the bathroom? Or blue and white in the kitchen. We’re also big fans of making sure all the materials in the space complement each other as well as the paint palette. This means adding stone, brick, and wood to warm things up and break up even the most lovely shade of pink in the bedroom.
The Best Paint Colors For Your Home
Searching for the best blue paint colors? Or the best black paint for kitchen cabinets? (Yeah, we go there.) Desperate to find the very best gray interior paint color? We have you covered in every shade—plus greens and whites, to boot.
Our Favorite White Kitchen Cabinet Paint Colors
Trust us—as popular a paint color as white is for the kitchen, they are not all created equally. Depending on which of the best white paints you choose, your room could read warm and welcoming or clean and bright. Pick the wrong one, however, and you could be spelling dingy disaster until it’s time to paint…again. We come back to our favorite white paint colors for the kitchen (and anywhere else in the house, really) time and time again.
Our Favorite Green Paint Colors
Using green paint for the home can be such a lovely way to bring a bit of the soothing, grounding feelings of the outdoors inside. Whether you appreciate a pretty pastel or yearn for the drama of a deep shade of jungly green, we’ve rounded up our favorite green paint colors for you to find the right inspiration for your space. (May we suggest using green interior paints in the kitchen? Office? Bathroom? Laundry Room? …You get the picture.)
Our Favorite Blue Kitchen Cabinet Colors
Blue is an incredibly versatile color of paint with so many hues and shades that it is practically begging to be used in every home, somewhere. It can be light and airy or deep and moody or somewhere in between. But the best blue paint colors are going to be the ones that complement your style already and play well with their surroundings. Our favorite blue paint colors range from a gray-toned navy to an almost robin egg blue. And you may be surprised at where we thought to put them!
Our Favorite Gray Paint Colors
Gray has been one of the most popular interior paint colors for years now, and for good reason. It’s a strong foundation for versatile styling and pairs well with so many other colors and materials. However, finding the exact right gray for your space—that’s a whole different story, and a difficult one at that! Lucky for you, we’ve narrowed down the search to a few of our absolute favorite gray paint colors that you’ll absolutely fall in love with.
Our Favorite Black Kitchen Cabinet Paint Colors
Yes, we are bold enough to love black as an interior paint color, and we think you can be, too! Granted, it’s not for everyone, but in the right space and dose, black interiors can be dramatic, sleek, and epically cool—and not just as a passing trend! Just make sure that in choosing your black paint for kitchen cabinets (or anywhere else in the home) that you’ve done your research about how to care for darker paint colors in the home and which ones will look best in your space. Trust us: black is so much more than simply black when it comes to paint! Find out which perfect black paint color we’ve used time and again to get yourself started.
Our Favorite Paints Brands And Their Best Colors
As we mentioned earlier, not all paint brands are of the same quality. And when you’re going to the work of remodeling or putting the finishing touches on your new home, you want the time, energy, and money invested to show. And not just, well, for show. But for the durability, unique character, and feeling that the paint color can give you and anyone else who enters your home. We have two go-to paint brands we trust and love—here’s the who and why.
Why The Pros Choose Farrow & Ball Interior Paints
One of the reasons we absolutely love Farrow & Ball paint colors is because they are richer and more vibrant than most anything else on the market. They achieve their unique levels of depth by tinting with natural ingredients rather than choosing synthetics like most other brands. Even a decent attempt at a color-matched paint won’t give you the same look as a true Farrow & Ball. Trust the pros, here: don’t go for the knock off.
As for our favorite Farrow & Ball paint colors, they range from moody blue to the perfect, even-keeled gray. But you’ll have to check out the picture evidence to believe how good they are in real life.
Why The Pros Choose Benjamin Moore Paints
Benjamin Moore reigns supreme when it comes to producing perfect neutral paints. One of our most-used whites and our absolute favorite black paint comes from Benjamin Moore. They’re rich, versatile colors that can often lean whichever way they’re pushed by other paints or decor making them beautifully flexible as your tastes change through the years.
Find our top 5 favorite Benjamin Moore paint colors here!
Contact Us For Your Next Project
The hope is that you’re now armed with information and inspiration, more ready now than ever to get started on your next home project! The key is knowing where the experts come in to make everything that you’re imagining possible and maybe even perfect.
Christopher Scott Cabinetry specializes in beautifully detailed, meticulously designed, and impeccably built cabinetry for every home. Whether it’s new kitchen cabinetry, the master closet of your dreams, a perfectly tailored bathroom vanity, or a fully custom home office, we’re the pros you can count on to deliver top-quality materials, clever functionality, and gorgeous custom details suited to your exact interior design style.
Ready to find out more about Christopher Scott Cabinetry & Design Services? Check out our online portfolios or contact us today to see how we can make your built-in cabinetry dreams become a reality!
