First, remember that many of the interior paint colors at your local hardware store are designed to look great in the paint rack and offer you every imaginable option, but many of these same colors are too bright for interior walls or furniture. You'll get tired of them quickly and be tempted to go back to beige! Another portion of these paint color chips will only work in a young girl's room or playroom because unless you're an adolescent or younger, they'll feel too sweet and sugary to be around for long. If the color you're considering resembles a Fischer Price toy, cotton candy or bright nail polish, you'll want to pick again... with one exception. The only style of furnishings that can live with a higher ratio of bright interior paint colors is modern furniture. If modern is not your style, you just narrowed your paint color choices dramatically.

Second, never look at a paint color exists by itself. Unless you want a room covered head to toe in the color of your paint chip, you'll need to create a context for your favorite color. Every color gets surrounded by a lot of other colors in a room... from furniture to wood and metal finishes to artwork and accents. Every color influences the colors it sits next to, even changing hue altogether. Make sure you're looking at color combinations together, and that the hues bring out the best in each other. For great color combination ideas, check out the professionally designed color schemes in our room design search page.

Third, always view paint colors in the direction they'll be used. Color paint chips change dramatically when lying on a table (horizontally) or held up against the wall (vertically). ALWAYS hold your paint color chip vertically – that's where your paint is going to go. Also, look at paint colors in several lights... morning, afternoon and dusk. Morning and evening light bring out dramatically different undertones in every color.

Remember too, that color isn't an island. Good color is about good color combinations, and the best color schemes involve a lot more than any single color. It's the combination of colors together that create emotional and physical energy that we can customize to our individual needs. Your preferences and choices should take into account the color families you like, not just individual colors. For more information on color families, check out our EP Profiles™ and Color Charts.

Unless you're starting from scratch, new color choices need to work with what you already own or use regularly. Tracking your own personal color favorites can be as simple as looking at what you already own (artwork, clothing, dishes, placemats, linens, furniture, etc.). Even more importantly, track what you use most often (which clothing gets worn, which dishes get used, and which artwork gets hung rather than stored away).

Finally, take note of what you like most – which rooms, magazine photos and styles get your attention most often. Or look through our Room Cues™ to see which style grabs your attention. Specific rooms styles look best with certain colors.

So here's the problem with adding brighter color to our homes. As it turns out, our homes are different than our clothes. Fuchsia might be a great color for a sweater; on four walls not so much. Strong colors always need to be chosen carefully.That means passing on most of the strong colors at the paint store in favor of the ones that add color, but don't overwhelm.

For help choosing interior paint colors that work, read more about our Color Charts. Every color in these reference charts will work in your home, and they're conveniently shown together with compatible colors.

The reason those magazine photos look so good is because interior designers choose a color family or color palette, not single colors. Each color is carefully chosen to work with each other – that's why they look so effortless and harmonious. The biggest color scheme problems are rarely about any one wrong color – it's about the wrong combination of colors used together.

Two common color scheme problems....

First, colors need to be from the same color family. Denim blue works well with moss green because both colors are from the rustic color family. But denim doesn't work as well with turquoise from the modern color family. Color work together when they share the same quality... that's what we mean by color family.

Second, the spread between light and dark values in a room shouldn't be too great. Unless you're after a modern or chic scheme that plays at both ends of the light-dark color spectrum, you want to keep your color choices within a middle range of hues. You still need contrast between light and dark colors, but lessen the extremes to avoid a choppy-looking room.

To learn more about color families, check out our EP Profiles™ and Color Charts. You'll also find a range of professionally-designed color schemes on our room design search page.

• First, find out what your personal style is. If you're not sure, take our free Environmental Personality test. Your personal preferences will help determine which colors you should live with. You'll have the option to learn more about each of the EP Profiles™ after you complete the survey.
  
  
• Second, browse our photos to find rooms you like. The color scheme for each room is described with each photo, or you can order our failsafe Color Charts that cross-reference each room scheme with paint color numbers from Sherwin William, Benjamin Moore and Behr.
  
  
• Finally, browse our Room Cues™ to find a room style you love. Each of our popular room styles are cross-referenced to our EP Profiles™, and will help you pull together the furniture, accents and colors that make your favorite style work. Paint reference numbers are included with each of the Room Cues™.