Picking a paint color sounds fun—until you're standing under fluorescent lights holding a handful of swatches that look like some version of Modern Greige. Suddenly, you're wondering how Alabaster Whisper is different from Whispering Alabaster. Or is it?

Choosing the right paint color for your home doesn't have to be frustrating. Here are five tips to help you pick a color you’ll love—with minimal stress and acceptable speed.

Choosing colors for your home should feel fun and creative. But for many people, when it’s time to peruse a paint store or scroll through an online color palette, their palms begin to sweat and their mind begins to stress. The options! The undertones! The lighting! And the biggie, the risk of regret!

If you’ve ever stood in your living room holding 10 paint swatches that seem exactly the same yet completely different, then you know the overwhelming stress color can cause. But remember the fun and creative part? Reading this blog can help you reach that goal. We’ll tackle the three biggest questions about color that come up again and again. You are not alone. So let’s break them down and take a little stress out of the process.

You walk into a room and instantly feel calm even though your stress level is at an 11. You enter a space feeling blah and instantly are motivated to conquer your corner of the world. While those are extreme examples, there’s no denying that interior design is a powerful mood influencer -- and its greatest superpower is color. Simply changing the color scheme in a room can transform its entire atmosphere, shifting how we feel, behave, and even how much time we want to spend in that space. Here's how a well-thought-out color change can completely refresh a room, making it feel brand new.

Imagine hearing the following sentence in the deep baritone of dramatic movie announcer guy: “In a world where colorless homes dominate America’s residential landscape, a hero emerges from the world of interior design who chooses colors with confidence, banishing forever the scourge of the bland beige box.” You can be that hero. You can bring color into your home like a kick-butt chromo warrior! Half of the battle is learning the three color-choosing mistakes you must avoid and how to solve them.

Read on, chosen one. Read on.

Roy G. Biv, remember him? He typically spells his name and, in all caps, smashed together: ROYGBIV. He was the fellow you were likely introduced to in elementary school or through a kids TV show as a way to remember the seven colors of the rainbow (light spectrum) red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Not only is that a fun way for kids to remember the rainbow, it works for adults, too!

Since I’ve already hit on the topics of seven and fun and color, I’m going to keep things rolling today and share seven fun facts about color. The world could use more fun and color these days.

Maybe you’re redoing your kitchen or primary bath. Maybe your blah living room is your project for the year—or you’re moving into a new home and have multiple projects to tackle. No matter your situation, you know decisions are more complicated as soon as someone else enters the picture. Especially if that someone enters the picture and messes it all up with opinions that don’t match yours. The nerve! In this blog, I’ll share five tips to help smooth over shared decisions to achieve results you both love.

I’m baaaaaaaack! Wow, what an exciting and wonderful time we had in Japan! There is so much to share with you all. It was a time for family, food, drink, sights, sounds, and unforgettable experiences. Did I bring you something back? Of course I did! You know I wouldn’t forget about my favorite followers just because I travelled to the future (Japan is 16 hours ahead of my normal U.S. Pacific Time zone). My gifts to you, which will spread across a number of blogs and YouTube videos, include images I’m confident will beguile and inspire you and design-related observations I hope will help you see new options from a new perspective. So, let’s get started!

Before I go down the rabbit hole of what colors aren’t as popular as they once were, let me share that you should always make choices based on what you love, the look you want, and the activities you will be doing in that room. I have a great post to help you choose the perfect color palette by asking yourself five simple questions. If you haven’t read that, you can find it here. In my opinion, the only reason to choose colors for others and not yourself is if you’re painting to put your house up for sale or have a rental property to rent. In those cases, you would want to choose colors with wide appeal.

Disclaimer complete. Now, just for fun, let’s take a little look-see at what the paint manufacturers are noting as colors that the masses once made popular but now…not so much.

Have you ever chosen a paint color, one you absolutely love, and then once it’s up on the walls your love has turned to lukewarm like or downright disdain? Why? Why is this happening, you may ask yourself—especially if you already painted the entire living room the color you just knew would be perfect.

Today I’m going to share with you three things that can affect your color choice. Once you’ve learned these, you won’t ever have to suffer “painter’s remorse” again! So let’s walk through them.

Many people get hung up when it comes to choosing a color scheme for a room they want to redesign. If you’re one of those people, you won’t be for long. In this blog ’ll share a very special trick to help you cruise when you need to choose. On the basis of that last sentence you’re probably thinking, “Michele, are you a wizard? Or a poet? Or both?” True wizard poets never reveal themselves. Let’s leave it at that.

If you are thinking about painting a wall, table, cabinet or almost any other surface in your home, you could save yourself time, energy, grief and money by understanding paint finishes…

I know it may seem that I spend a majority of my time blogging about color and how it can really change the way a space will feel. That’s because it’s such a powerful tool…