Making Paint Swatches Work For You

The truth is, picking color from a swatch is hard. The lighting in the store is different from your home and the area is extremely small compared to the area of your wall.

That's why Better Homes & Gardens shared their method for getting the color you want by starting with swatches.

Swatch Phase: Choose a handful of swatches you like at the store. Many times you'll be able to take cards or chips home, and you absolutely should. It helps to see the colors under the light in which they would actually be.

Take the swatches home and look at them in the room you intend to paint, but don't stop there. Look at them several times a day. Look at them with the curtains open and the curtains closed. Look under lamp light, fire light, the TV, the overhead light, then put them side by side with your accessories. How does the paint look with your furniture? With the curtains? This should help you to slowly rule out colors over a few days or a week. After a week, narrow it down to 2 or 3 of your favorite colors and start phase 2. 

Test Phase: Go back to the store with your two favorite swatches in hand and ask for small cans of paint in those colors (they usually cost just a few dollars but can cover a reasonably large area). Take them home and paint them in large areas at eye-level.

Leave them there for a week. Repeat what you did with the swatches: look under all lights and conditions, push furniture up next to the paint and stand back and look at it.

Do this, and you'll be much more satisfied with your color when you finally choose it!