One of my favorite kinds of jobs

When I get a call from someone that needs help picking paints, I am happy.  Color is a personal thing and many people are very intimidated and sometimes scared of making the wrong color choice.  Asking for advice from friends doesn’t always help as there are many different answers as well as colors the friends like more often than the color that is correct for the person searching for it. 

People ultimately want to feel good in their space, and color is a vital component to someone’s overall wellbeing.  Choosing the wrong color can really change your mood.

Finding what people are really looking for when they don’t really know themselves is a challenge, but one that I love.  Walking into a space and learning about the person who will be using it and what will actually be in the room is, for me, exciting.  Listening to someone describe the mood they are looking for, the tone the hope to achieve and then the color they have in mind does get my brain all tingly.  Yes, I am slightly insane.

  (Of course, letting me finish the room by purchasing the furniture and decorating the whole space makes it even better!)

I do have clients that are pretty firm on what color they want, say a blue or a red, but then need help finding the perfect shade.  That job can sometimes be more challenging as clients like that are so focused on MATCHING a color exactly to something else in the room that they lose sight of the overall picture, the whole room put together.  Convincing them that a shade is COMPLIMENTARY to the room as a whole and will work ends up being harder than the color selection itself.

 

Sometimes I get the call AFTER the client has paid for and painted on several samples in slightly different shades all over their walls.  I do feel badly for these people that have tried to “go it alone” first and paid for all those samples.  For less than what they spent on that, they could have hired me for a color consult, got free samples and not buy paint until the perfect color was selected.  Many dollars down the drain.

 

I get a little rush when I walk into this kind of room. When I discover what they were trying to find is all wrong and can give them something unexpected yet fits perfectly, I can see it in their face when they GET IT, like an “ah ha” moment. 

Today I am off on another color challenge.  The goal is to give the client their light bulb moment.  We shall see. 

I will also try to get  the “after” pictures of the first space at the beginning of this post very soon.  Stay tuned.