Color, color everywhere: that’s the feeling customers get when they walk into a paint store and are surrounded by sample paint chips and cards. Dan Saunders, Marketing Coordinator for Miller Paint, explains, “A 14-foot wall display at a Miller paint store will offer 1400 colors to take home and study for free.”

When it comes to painting, most of us are in love with paint cards. We grab them by the handful from every display we see. Todd Braden, Vice-President of Marketing for Rodda Paint, estimates that his company gives away over a million dollars worth of color sample material annually.

Even though most paint dealers will formulate a color for a customer through computer matching from a customer swatch, Saunders believes that about 80% of Miller’s customers come in with a sample to match to a paint chip.

Because paint chips are small and walls are large, paint chips are only the first step in selecting a paint color. Paint chips help to narrow choices, but they do not eliminate the need to test a color on the wall where it is influenced by surface texture and lighting.

Most paint companies sell small samples of paint so customers can apply them directly to a wall or can apply them to a plywood board to move around to really live with the color. Some companies, like Devine and Yolo, sell large sample color posters that eliminate the need to paint a sample board.

Braden suggests painting sample colors right up to trim or other surfaces that will not be painted to see the color in relationship to other colors in the room.

Using More Than One Color
Select paint chips in proportion to how much paint will be used. The largest paint chip should represent the body or main color and smaller chips should represent trim and accent colors. Merge the colors to see how they look together.

Many paint companies offer idea cards or palette cards with suggested color schemes to coordinate several colors. Often these colors are around a theme such as creating a seaside escape or a desert oasis in your home.

While using pre-selected body, trim, and accent colors does offer the guidance of specialists from those paint companies that offer them, be aware that they often follow a color trend. Paint color trends usually last about three years. If you don’t want your painting project to seem out of date in a few years, select colors you really like.

Color Strips
Color strips that are light to dark variations of one color make it easy to select a monochromatic color scheme. When one color is used in varying values and intensities, keep the color scheme lively by selecting colors separated by a least one color chip on the strip.

To keep the monochromatic project from becoming boring, use a contrasting color from another color strip in the same brand as an accent. Choosing the contrasting color from the same position (top, bottom, or middle) on the second strip will ensure the same color intensity.

Be sure to double-check your selected color scheme by clipping apart the strips so that your individual choices are not influenced by other colors on the strips.

Things to Remember About Paint Chips
Most paint chips are offered in satin finish. Braden suggests wetting the chip to get an idea of what the color would look like in a semi-gloss finish.

When you are looking at paint chips in a store, they are not influenced by the green reflective light bouncing off foliage outside a home’s windows or the landscaping surrounding exterior painting jobs.

Incandescent light will give chips a yellow cast. Fluorescent light will give a blue cast. Halogen light gives an intense white light that enhances bright colors and washes out pastel hues.

The color from the same paint chip will seem more intense when applied to four walls than it will seem if it is applied to one wall as a focal point, because the same color will be reflecting off of each wall.

The names on color chips are there more to create an emotional response to the color than to describe it. When communicating what color you want to your paint dealer, refer to it by brand and code number.

According to Metro Recycling Information, color chips are not recyclable. Better to practice re-use: pass them on to someone doing crafts.

Paulette Rossi is a Certified Master Recycler living in Portland, OR.