How to Pick Awesome Color Combos

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One thing I’ve always struggled with is how to pick the best paint color combos. You’d think I was colorblind. Seriously!

Thankfully, I absolutely love turquoise and soft feminine colors for my walls and furnishings, and you can only mess up turquoise so much, right? šŸ˜‰

But sometimes you want something more than turquoise and white! I love soft colored walls, but with pops of color on furniture or pillows or accessories. But at times, I’m like, “Oh, man….what colors really go well together?!” I suck at color.

As most of you know, I just paid a crap-load of money to cut down a horribly oppressive maple tree in my backyard. Now, there is tons of light in what used to be our “cave” of a family room.

Now, with all this light and airy feeling, it’s a happier place, and I’m ready to pick colors that are going to finally make this room feel decorated!

So I decided to share my favorite places to get ideas for color combos that will be a no-brainer (aside from the obvious Pinterest…). Here goes!

How to Pick Awesome Color Combos - Thrift Diving Blog

 

 

1. ColourLovers.com

I discovered Colour Lovers a couple years ago and it’s been one of my favorite sites to browse colors that look best together. It’s totally community-generated, and people can “love” a color combo. The more “Loves” it gets, the more popular it becomes. It’s a great way to see what is trending on the site.

What’s cool is that if you’re a blogger or novice website designer (like me!) it’s a neat way to get some ideas for color combos for websites, too! šŸ™‚ Love that!

I also use this for ideas for painting some of my furniture projects.

 

How to Pick the Best Color Combos

 

2. Sherwin Williams Color Palettes

My favorite of their 8 color collections is the Coastal Cool. When I was designing my kids’ navigation-themed bathroom, I had found a great blue for the walls, Sherwin Williams Scanda. But I didn’t know what other colors to match it until I stumbled upon their Color Palettes. There are 20 colors in the interior palette and 5 in the exterior palette. They’re designed to all look good together. It really removes the guess-work out of trying to make your home look pulled together.

I may decide to just stick with this color family so that my home has a cohesive look instead of looking jacked up. HAHA.

In fact, I already use Sherwin Williams Sea Salt in my master bathroom and foyer and I love it!

Sherwin Williams Coast Cool Color Palette - Pretty colors Sherwin Williams Coast Cool Color Palette - Great for any room!

From the Coastal Cool palette, I picked these four for the kids’ bathroom! They looked amazing together!

Sherwin Williams Scanda-Fawn Brindle-Recycled Glass-Eider White - Thrift Diving Blog

 

Here are a couple quick shots of what my kids’ bathroom looked like when I was done with the DIY board and batten (my first attempt! Woo hoo!) and painted vanity. The Scanda and Elder White on the walls looked amazing with the brown painted vanity!

 

Serena's Kids Bathroom Makeover

 

Serenas-Bathroom-31_watermarked-767x1024

 

3.  Behr Color Combo Cards

The Home Depot carries these amazing Behr color combo cards. Remember their other tri-fold color combo cards? Honestly, I wasn’t a fan of those. I wasn’t inspired by them at all.

These are so much more fresh and pretty!  I’m really excited about them. More options, I think. And it really removes the guess-work from choosing something that’s going to work. It’s also easy to hand a stack to my kids and say, “Here ya go! Pick one!” when I’m ready to pick colors for their bedroom makeover.

Call me a lazy DIY’er… LOL

Related: BEFORE & AFTER: Boy’s Blue Accent Wall Bedroom Makeover

 

How to pick the most awesome color combos - Behr paint chips

 

These are my favorite ones below! I’d love to use Nature’s Reflection in my family room! Imagine what a houseful of males would say, though… Hmmm…LOL

Unmarked Trail seems like a pretty neutral, though!

 

How to pick the most awesome color combos - my favorites from Behr

 

These are awesome!! Seriously, it’s hard to choose!

 

How to pick the most awesome color combos - tons of choices - Behr paint

 

My Family Room

Speaking of which…this is what my family room looks like right now. EEK! It had a few improvements since moving in, like how I painted the old red brick fireplace to still look like brick, and now it’s a faux painted finish fireplace in a taupe color! (see that BEFORE and AFTER in How to Paint an Old Brick Fireplace).

The furniture is old and needs slipcovered and re-stuffed. New curtains…new rugs….ahhh…can’t wait to tackle this room with new paint!

That huge box is my new Stok grill I’ll be setting up for my patio.

Oh, and you see my $5.00 thrifted coffee table! šŸ™‚ Can’t wait to paint that!

Thrift Diving family room BEFORE makeover

 

Like I said, I usually suck at choosing colors because I don’t want to get it wrong and have to re-do a room because it’s not “working.” But these sites help to squash any “I’m just not sure!” drama that makes me procrastinate when I’m trying to choose color combos.

So what’s your favorite inspiration when choosing color combos? Leave your tip comment below! šŸ™‚

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21 Comments

  1. Sarah Kate says:

    I am also a ColourLovers fan! I have made so many palettes that I reference for my website, crafting, nd just general inspiration. I love the new feature where you can upload a picture and it will allow you to zoom in on a pixel and save the color to a palette! I’ve made some great ones that way.
    Benjamin Moore has an app called Color Capture that helps you shop by collections, or take a photo of something and pull colors from that. I also use Color Schemer which is an iOS app that helps you utilize all kinds of color methodology.
    I’m also one of those people who walks out with a small collection of paint cards every time I walk into the hardware store šŸ™‚ If I need inspiration, I sit down with my collection and put stuff together.

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