How Do You Choose Paint Colours for Your Home?

Painters use a wheel of twelve colours. Red, yellow and blue are the primaries. Mixing two of them gives the secondaries: orange, green and violet. Mixing a primary with its neighbouring secondary gives the six in-between colours, such as blue-green and red-orange. The wheel is useful because position tells you how colours behave together: neighbours sit comfortably side by side, and opposites make each other look brighter.

• One colour, several tones: use lighter and darker versions of a single colour. It's the easiest route to a calm, put-together room, and the basis of colour drenching and capping.
• Neighbours: pick colours that sit side by side on the wheel, such as blue, blue-green and green. The result is gentle and easy on the eye.
• Opposites: pair colours from opposite sides, such as blue and orange. It's lively and bold, so use one as the main colour and the other in small doses.
• Three evenly spaced colours: choose three spaced equally around the wheel. It's playful and energetic, and works best when one colour leads and the other two support it.

Reds, oranges and yellows feel warm and cosy, while blues, greens and violets feel cool and calm. But almost every paint colour has an undertone that leans one way or the other. A grey can lean blue, green or pink, and a cream can lean yellow or pink. Undertones are why a colour that looked perfect on a card can look slightly off in your room. Compare your colour with your flooring, curtains and furniture, and check the undertones sit comfortably together.

A north-facing room gets cooler, flatter light, so colours look slightly bluer and darker there, and warm shades are often a good fit. South-facing rooms get warmer, brighter light, which can wash out pale colours and flatter cooler ones. Artificial light shifts things again: warm bulbs add yellow and cool ones add blue. Always look at a colour in daylight, in the evening and with your lights on.

If you're mixing colours, a classic rule of thumb is 60-30-10: around 60 per cent of the room in a main colour, 30 per cent in a second colour and 10 per cent in an accent. The main colour is usually the walls, the second might be the larger furniture or the curtains, and the accent is cushions, art or a single painted piece. It stops a scheme from feeling busy.

Think of your home as a series of rooms you walk through. Hallways, stairs and landings are the connecting thread, so they usually work best in a calm colour, or one shared with the rooms they lead to. Upstairs and downstairs can have different personalities, and bedrooms, a home office and a child's room might each want a different mood. Where two rooms connect, use different tones of the same colour, one a little lighter than the other, so the move between them feels natural.

White ceilings and woodwork are the default, but they're a choice, not a rule. A ceiling in a softer or deeper tone of the wall colour makes a room feel cosier, and painting the woodwork the same colour as the walls can make a room feel seamless. If that appeals, read our guide to colour drenching, and try both in the studio above.

Start with what you can't easily change: the flooring, the kitchen, a sofa or the curtains. Then pick one room, ideally the one you use most, and settle that first. It becomes the anchor for the rest of the house, and every other room is easier to choose once you have one colour you love. Seeing colours on a real wall, in your own light, is the best way to decide, especially in homes across Sutton Coldfield where light and room sizes vary a lot.