Six Tips to Picking the Right Paint Color

Anjie Cho June 30, 2021

Think back to the last time you painted a room in your home. Odds are you spent more time than you thought possible combing through color swatches in the paint department. You brought home a pocketful, or more, and taped them up on the wall to ‘live’ with them for a few days. Maybe more than a few days. Perhaps you’re still considering those swatches today.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Here are 6 tips to picking the right paint color for your space.

Get inspired

With all the colors of the rainbow (and then some) at your fingertips, starting with swatches in a paint shop will quickly overwhelm you. Instead, do your homework first. What rooms and styles appeal to you in magazines or on Pinterest? Do you have a favorite piece of furniture or accent piece that you’d like included in the room? Build a color scheme off that item.

Get in touch

How do you use the room you’ll be painting? What mood do you want to invoke? A bedroom, for example, is well suited to subdued calming hues. If you’re painting a child’s playroom or a den, however, you may want to select something more vibrant and energizing. You can also look at the meanings of the colors based on feng shui or color psychology. My book 108 Ways to Create Holistic Spaces goes through feng shui color theory.

Frame it

Your paint color will be influenced by the things around it. If you place a color sample on a white wall, for example, the color will appear darker than it may eventually look spread throughout the entire room after you paint. Instead, hold the color sample up against your flooring and your furniture.

Shine a light

Sometimes a color that looks like absolute perfection in the store seems to look muddy and uninspired when you get it home. Was it your misguided enthusiasm for the hue in the shop? No, it’s more likely a matter of lighting. Make sure to look over those paint swatches at different times of day. Also take a look at the color in different areas of the room.

Think outside the walls

Take into consideration existing finishes – flooring, furniture, and even other rooms within your line of sight. How does your intended paint color work with those elements?

Be open to neutral

If you’re still wavering on the right color, consider going with a neutral. Today’s options go beyond varying shades of white. Neutrals like brown and grey are trending. When you go this route, incorporate pops of personality and color with accessories. Not only will you have more flexibility with color choice when you introduce it through a chair or pillow, you can also change your color-loving mind more easily and cost effectively whenever the whim hits you.

by Anjie Cho

If you’d like to learn more about feng shui, check out Mindful Design Feng Shui School at: www.mindfuldesignschool.com

Feng Shui Paint Colors for Relaxation

Guest User May 5, 2021

A lot of us are living modern, speedy lives these days, and so we’re seeking ways to find more relaxation and harmony in our environments. We want to feel less rushed and less anxious, which can be a challenge with everything that’s going on around us. Through feng shui, we can work on creating more relaxation and ease in our homes and our lives.

One of the simplest ways to shift your environment and your feng shui is through color, including paint colors. I know it may seem daunting to repaint your space, but it’s actually pretty noncommittal. It doesn’t take as long as many other home projects, and if you don’t like the color you choose, you can always change it. If you really don’t have the bandwidth to paint your walls, you could instead get a blank canvas and paint that. You can also bring in color with accents like pillows, blankets, rugs, drapes, or even small items like candles or crystals.

Colors can have a strong impact in terms of creating an ambiance and shifting your mood. Most of us are visual people, and we’re very affected by what we see. That’s one of the reasons that feng shui is so important: not only do we move through spaces physically, we also focus on visual cues. (That’s why our phones and Instagram are so attractive — they activate our vision!) The color we surround ourselves with makes a big difference.

Feng shui is inspired by nature, so when we talk about relaxing colors in terms of feng shui, think about the colors you see most often in the natural world. Those are usually the most tranquil.

Here are a few colors you can try out in your home to create a more relaxing environment:

Blue: Use relaxing tones of blue to create a meditative feeling. Think of the pale blue of the sky, or the deep, dark blue of the ocean, and how these make you feel. Blue can create a quiet, settling sensation, like an exhale or letting go of tension.

Green: Greens represent tranquility and the wood element. There can be very vibrant greens, but for a peaceful, relaxing feeling we want to look at deep and pale greens. Bright green can be very active and stimulating, so choose something more subtle if your goal is relaxation.

Brown: Browns bring in the earth element — think of the earthy tones of sand and soil that remind us of being grounded in the earth. Pale browns can be reminiscent of sand on the beach, and darker browns call to mind the steadiness of a strong tree trunk, or the support of Mother Earth below you.

Purple: While this might be less common in the natural world, I find that pale and deep violets can be very balancing and relaxing. They can also invite more inner peace and support self-worth and abundance.

by Anjie Cho

If you’d like to learn more about feng shui, check out Mindful Design Feng Shui School at: www.mindfuldesignschool.com

Feng Shui for Prosperity

Guest User April 21, 2021

I wanted to share a little about feng shui and prosperity. Something I’ve noticed in my most prosperous clients is that they all frequently make changes in their home.

This is an important thing to do to invite more prosperity and good qi. My business partner Laura Morris always has a home project she’s working on, and I’m actually doing a renovation this year. Many of my clients renovate some part of their home every year.

I think we can all visualize visiting a relative who hasn’t made any changes to their house in years. I once went to somebody’s parents’ home, and they literally had furniture from the sixties and seventies, and it even had a certain smell because it had aged.

Of course, you want to reuse and upcycle things as much as possible. At the same time, there’s an importance in changing the energy of your home, in having home projects and investing time, energy, and money into improving your home.

If renovating isn’t within your budget, or you live in a rental, there are also very simple changes you can make. One thing you can do is change your bed linens each year. Your bed is a great place to make changes, because it’s the part of your home that’s closest to you. You spend so much passive time in bed when you’re really absorbing the energy around you. You want to buy the highest quality linens possible — if you can, go for organic, non-toxic, ethically made products. It really does make a difference to invest in high quality changes in your home.

There are a few things you can do with your retired linens so that they don’t go to waste. I like to use them as picnic blankets. You can also call your local animal shelter, and they’ll usually take them for the rescue animals. Another option is to take them to a textile recycling center where they can be reused for things like packing materials. It’s important to be mindful of what you let go of, and making sure you are recycling, repurposing, or passing them on to someone else who can use them.

If getting new bed linens feels like a lot for you, you can also repot your plants. The idea is to constantly look at the qi in your home, and make sure that you’re not letting your home, your life, or the energy fall stagnant. Dust is a huge indication from the phenomenal world that this part of your life is falling stagnant. If you have a shrine or altar that’s collecting dust, for example, what does that mean about your spiritual life? There might even be a whole room or closet in your home that hasn’t been touched in a while, that’s collecting dust and stagnant energy.

You deserve to have a nice home. You deserve to make improvements to your home that support you, whether that’s a big renovation or something as simple as changing your linens or repotting your plants. Making changes in your home shifts the qi, so I hope you are able to invite more prosperity by finding something you can change in your home!

by Anjie Cho

If you’d like to learn more about feng shui, check out Mindful Design Feng Shui School at: www.mindfuldesignschool.com