Choosing your interior paint color is an exciting part of the home decorating process. The only rule is that the colors selected should share the same intensity. Your choice of colors will create the desired effect: warm or cool, energetic or serene.

WHICH PAINT PRODUCT?

Choice of paint products has never been better. Better quality paints like Benjamin Moore line of paints will cost a few dollars more, but will actually require less paint to cover the same area.

THE 60 – 30 – 10 RULE FOR ROOM-BY-ROOM COLOR FLOW

Here’s a great tip to create a flow of color throughout your house: For the first room, take your favorite three-color palette (use the 60-30-10 rule) and select one color, say a cream color, to be the primary color (60%), for your walls. Then select another color, a sage green, to be your secondary color (30%), for your window sills or mantelpiece. The last color, perhaps a vibrant shade of burnt orange, can be your accent color (10%), on your decorative pieces, as in vases or throw pillows. Now you have a color scheme for the first room.

Now an adjacent second room, use the same three colors, except this time, use the sage green as your primary, the cream as your secondary, and the burnt orange can still be your accent color.

Got a third room? This room will use the burnt orange as the primary color, and you can decide the order which the other two colors will occupy. You have just used a well-loved designer trick to unify three rooms! Now accessorize to create vibrancy and excitement. Then go up to a different area of your home, choose another palette of three colors, and start all over again!