I love free advice; especially when it can be used from home at your leisure. Choosing colour is still one of the most difficult decisions to make when redecorating, so we can use all the help we can get. CIL has a new website that will help you choose a colour palette for each room in the home based on mood. In past columns I've written about how colour affects mood. The new CIL website is based on the mood factor. It's a new way to look at colour and another free tool that may just give you a direction in which to proceed with your colour choices.
"Studies show that even once in store, many consumers still don't know what paint colour to buy, yet almost everyone can describe what kind of feeling they would like to create in their room," says Jennifer Jones, marketing communications manager of CIL Paints. To this end, CIL has launched a new website (www.cil.ca), featuring a unique tool to help consumers choose colours based on mood.
The website offers a "mood test," which walks visitors through a series of images and asks them to click on their favourite ones. The test results reveal a person's décor taste and users are directed to a colour palette to help them create their desired ambience. Visitors can put together their own swatch of colours that are guaranteed to co-ordinate, or opt to have the site's Colour Coordinator recommend personalized colour schemes in real-time.
"The whole idea of the mood test is to make the paint selection process simpler," said Jones, who emphasizes most people cite choosing a wall colour as the hardest part of a paint project. "From the comfort of home, with a few clicks of a mouse, we're helping people turn a feeling into a fabulous look," she added, explaining test-user feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.
I was on the new site as soon as I heard about it and had a great time with all of the tools and advice it had to offer. Once you've taken the mood test, you can browse through several photos of rooms in that mood realm. Would your tastes lean toward Mellow and Comforting or Clean and Playful? The photos in each mood category give you a good sampling of your mood tastes in various settings and style of décor. Not every photo in your specific mood style will be to your exact liking but there is a wide enough range of photos in each category that will give you a good idea of what your style really is. If you find a room shot that speaks to you, simply click on 'save these swatches' and the colour palette, complete with colour names and numbers, will be saved for future use or can be printed to take with you to the paint store. You can even email the swatch to a friend to get their advice on your choices. You may have different mood styles in different rooms, so don't think you have to stay in one style of colour palette. I chose to browse all of the photos in each mood category just to get ideas.
Virtual painter
One of my favourite tools is the virtual painter. You can take your saved colour swatches and use them to paint virtual rooms so you can see what they will look like in many settings. It's a great way to get a visual on colour options. Unlike the sample photos in each colour-mood category, the virtual painter allows you to take your saved swatches and place the colours into a virtual room in varying ways. You can, for example, paint the darkest colour on a focal wall instead of on the floor or opt to paint all surfaces in just two of the three colours. The virtual painter allows you to put colour on detailed items like window trim, accent items and window treatments. If you are working with a fixed colour in your real room, like dark brown carpeting in your bedroom, then you can factor this into the room colour scheme. It's a risk-free way to decorate before you buy.
The site also has the standard Paint Calculator to help you calculate how much paint you need for your project and a Paint Suggestor tool to help you decide what kind of paint you need for specific rooms and surfaces. You can input info into this program regarding the surface you're planning to paint and indicate which store you'd buy the paint from (Rona, Canadian Tire, etc.) and it will recommend the exact kind of CIL paint your chosen store will carry. This will save you having to browse around in the paint area, reading labels for specific surface requirements and guessing at what you need. Once you know the name and type of paint you need, you can visit the site of your chosen retailer for pricing and availability or to compare prices to other retailers. The more homework you can do before you go shopping, the better.
The Internet can be a great decorating tool and should be used to garner and share ideas for decorating projects, styles and colour palettes.
Connieoliver@shaw.ca
