Painting your home (or just a room) can make a huge difference for the style of your home. It's amazing how a fresh coat of paint can transform a room from drab to fab. Whether you do it yourself or pay a contractor, it's one of the easiest and least expensive home improvements you can do.
While I love choosing paint colors, I've learned over the years that this seems to be a challenge for many home owners, so I thought I would provide a few tips.
Of course, it depends whether you are planning to sell your house or if you plan to live in it for a while. If you're going to sell soon, you really want to go for light and neutral colors. Generally grays, followed by greiges (a mix of gray and beige) are the most neutral and widely appealing to buyers. You can read more about the specific paint shades in this article: Best paint color shades if you're selling a house.
As it turns out, the most popular colors for selling a house are also the most popular shades of paint for new home owners. If you are planning to live in your home for a while, the world is your oyster and you can use whatever color(s) you prefer. Currently, grays are the most popular shades of paint since they are cool and neutral...so they go with almost everything. If you're considering grays, I wrote this article outlilning the most popular shades of gray paint and how to coordinate darker accent walls.
If you're looking at painting your bedroom, you may want to consider using a shade of blue. It turns out the blue paint colors lead to a better night's sleep. Who knew?
My personal preference is to one central color in the main living areas, and occasionally, if there is a good accent wall (or a chair rail in the dining room/living room) add a darker accent color of the same shade, but darker tone. I prefer neutral colors such as gray for those areas. For the bedrooms, I think it's often nicer to introduce another color...ideally a relaxing one, such as blue - could be light, mid or dark...your preference. If you have kids and they want their own color for the bedroom, I think that's perfectly fine. If they want to do a wild color (e.g. bright, dark, taste specific), consider just doing this color on one accent wall.