If you’re giving your home’s interior an upgrade with a fresh coat of paint, you may not know where to start. What colours will work best? Should you paint every surface? What should I accent in my house? Well, it can be difficult to get your interior painting project off the ground.
That’s why we’re here to help. We have a few tips that you can employ to make the most of your upcoming project. Here’s our two cents on the best way to choose accent walls in your home, and how best to coordinate your accent and non-accent wall colours. Don’t forget, when you’re ready to get started, we’re eager to help — reach out to your painting professionals here at Integrity Painting of Winnipeg to schedule an appointment and to get a free estimate for your project!
Choosing Your Accent Walls
While some accent walls are obvious, we often find that homeowners aren’t sure which walls will work best to accent. After all, it’s not every home that has a small, inset wall with a fireplace (which would be ideal for an accent wall, by the way). When selecting your accent wall (or walls), it’s best to consider what you are accenting, it’s a good idea to accent smaller walls throughout your home, and it’s best to keep your accents simple. Here’s a bit more on those three points:
What Are You Accenting?
An accent wall should accent something, as the name implies. That is to say that your accent wall should draw the attention of those in the room, and it should guide the eye to an accent. You may have a wall with a fireplace, as we mentioned, which will serve as a great focal point for your accent wall. Or, you might have a chaise lounge in front of a windowed wall, creating an excellent eyedraw. Perhaps you have a wall on which you’ve mounted your TV, or a wall with a fantastic painting that you cherish — both can serve as an ideal focus.
Opt for Smaller Walls
While you may be tempted to use a bolder colour on large swaths of your home’s paintable surfaces, it pays to choose smaller walls for accents. Oddly enough, smaller walls gain more attention than large walls, especially when they’re accented — and that will prove doubly true with a highlighting colour. These walls are also often more interesting, geometrically speaking. Smaller accent walls are often tall rectangles, or angled walls that meet at the cap of the ceiling. In short, an accent wall won’t likely be the biggest wall in the room, or else it won’t be an accent.
Keep It Simple
It can be easy to get carried away with your accent colour, painting wall after wall, and wrapping your accent wall around corners throughout the house until you lose the focus that these walls would otherwise provide. If you’re uncertain about which walls to accent (if you’re considering more than one), start small with a wall that you’re certain you’d like to accent, and then paint additional walls if you think expanding the accent will improve the appeal of the room.
Choosing a Colour
It can prove just as difficult to select a paint colour as it can to choose the wall or walls which it will coat. Our suggestions are as follows: Pick a colour that compliments your non-accent walls, consider cooler, neutral hues, and consider the furniture and other surroundings in the room in which you’re working.
Compliment Non-Accent Walls
If you’ve settled on a non-accent wall colour — which is to say a colour for the rest of the walls in a given room — then you’re well on your way to discovering an accent. Take a paint swatch of your non-accent wall colour and compare it with other colour options, side by side. Consider colours that compliment each other (like a pale blue and a navy blue), or colours that contrast each other (like a grey-green and a rust orange). It’s best to stick to colours that are close together on the colour wheel, or colours that are on opposite ends of the colour wheel.
Keep it Cool
While you may be tempted to go with a vibrant, daring colour, you may want to consider colours that are bold, yet not overbearing. Most modern homes have accent colours that are intriguing without being overwhelming — after all, the accent colour doesn’t need to shout in order to draw the eye. Consider neutral tones and cool colours. Perhaps an eggplant purple accent against the charcoal greys of your non-accent walls. Many modern accent walls are blue, green, or purple (the cool colours on the colour wheel), such as olive, grey-blue, or a cabernet red-purple.
Now, you can certainly get away with bold, warm colours as well — especially on your smallest accent walls. Just be wary of overdoing the “accent.”
Consider Your Furniture
If your home is already decorated, you can opt to compliment your furniture with your accent walls, as well as the non-accent walls. Let’s say you have a chocolate sofa set — you can accent that colour with tan non-accent walls and a dark chocolate accent wall, thus drawing the eye throughout the room. Or perhaps you have a bright red coffee table — you can accent the centerpiece of your room with avocado-green walls. Consider paintings, fixtures, tables, shelves, chairs, couches, and other pieces of furniture that you have in your room.
Count on Integrity Painting for Your Project
Regardless of the colour palette that you settle on, you can always count on us to provide interior painting services with integrity. We can even help you to pick out the best colours for your home, and the best walls to accent if you’d like. After all, we have decades of experience in the business, and we’d be happy to help! Reach out to us to get started — again, our expert painters proudly provide premier painting services, including interior and exterior home painting, for our neighbors here in Winnipeg!
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