We recently had a consultant from Devine paint come to our home to do a complete, in-home color consultation for us. We've wanted to repaint several rooms, but we have no idea how to pull it all together ourselves by picking the right colors. We needed professional help, and we got it!
Devine Color started in Portland and has their own line of paint, with the colors derived from nature. The owner/artist has now trained consultants around the country, including some folks in Seattle, to do the home consults.
Rather than matching the paints to the "stuff" in your house, like your couch and pillows and assorted knick-knacks, they try to match it to the "bones" of your house. For us, that was the hardwood floors and wood trim, and the granite counters. Then, they find a "base" color for your house from which to build a palette. Once you have that base color, you start looking at samples from all the major color groups (blues, reds, greens, oranges, browns, yellows....) and you complete a palette of complementary colors that all work well together. It's hard to divorce yourself from picking a color that looks great, say, with your couch, versus picking a color that just looks great with your base color and that you like on some primal level. But you have to trust the process. You don't even think in terms of what color will go in what room while you builld your palette!
Once you have your palette together, the consultant then walks with you through the rooms to build a master plan for the house. We picked a beautiful color from the palette for my kitchen that I promise I never would have come up with in a million years. I can't wait to actually paint it and see if it looks as good as I imagine.
Another fun thing about the consult is learning some painting tips, like when to paint the ceilings or how to paint odd structures like the ceiling drywall that covers the airducts.
Note, that they do a plan for your whole house, even if you want to paint just one room. The idea is to help you have a long-term vision and help each room flow seamlessly into the next. We aren't going to paint the entire house right away, but I can see rolling out their plan over the next few years.
http://www.devinecolor.com/
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