Paint Chips

If you’re planning to repaint your walls, you may be struggling to find the perfect shade to fit the vision you have for your new space. Staring at paint colors in the home improvement store and trying to imagine what it would look like in your home is stressful–not to mention impractical and inefficient. By using paint chips, you can see how the shade looks in your home without the commitment of spending your hard-earned money on gallons of paint. If you’re painting your home’s interior, paint chips will help you pick the right shade for your space!

What Are Paint Chips?

Paint chips, also called color samples, are your new best friend when it comes to interior painting. They are small, heavyweight pieces of paper that are colored to a specific shade of paint. Paint companies typically give away complimentary paint chips for the colors they sell to help customers choose the paint color they will be happiest with.

Usually, the paint chip will have one side colored completely in the shade of paint. On the other side, there will be useful information such as the shade name and the number the company uses to identify the paint color. You can take home paint chips of colors you are thinking of painting your walls. Then, you can see them in the space to help you envision the best colors for your home!

Sometimes paint chips are only one color, but other times they have multiple paint colors in the same chip. These colors are usually similar–for instance, different shades of the same color, on a scale from lightest to darkest. If you have decided on a general paint color, but are still debating on the shade, these kinds of paint chips can help you make the best decision! Other times, the paint chips will include colors that are complementary as a suggestion for an accent wall color. For example, if the main shade on the paint chip is seafoam mist, the paint chip may include a smaller square of dark tan color to show that these two shades go well together.

Some paint chips will include the RGB value on the back of the chip. The RGB value is a method of color-coding shades and tells you exactly how much red, green, and blue is in the shade. It may be hard to believe, but all the colors we can see with the human eye are some combination of red, green, and blue! With the RGB code, each of these three colors is given a number value between 0 and 255. The higher the RGB value, the lighter the color. If the three numbers are equal or close to equal, the shade will be a neutral one. And if the numbers are all fairly high, it will be a lighter shade. With this in mind, we should expect that all the RGB values for eggshell paint shades are close to each other, and fairly high.

How Are Paint Chips Used?

Paint chips can help you make a decision on what colors to paint your walls. When you take home paint chips and look at them in the room you are planning to paint, it can help you envision what the room will look like painted in the chip colors you’ve chosen.

Additionally, if you are trying to match a paint color to another aspect of your home, such as furniture, rugs, curtains, or other decor, taking home paint chips will help you find the perfect shade to match the existing items in the room. There’s nothing worse than thinking you have found the perfect shade of paint to go with a statement piece of furniture in your home, only to go home and discover the two shades actually clash! You can use paint chips as a litmus test for shades that are close to one another, but not exactly the same, to see which one is the best fit for colors you already have in your home.

Paint chips also help you see which colors are complementary to each other. You can match up multiple colors to see if the shades work together or not! For instance, if you are thinking of painting an accent wall, you can find paint chips for potential colors of the accent wall and the rest of the walls. When you see all the shades together, you may find that two work together the best and would look prettiest together in the room. Paint chips help you make a final decision on all your painting needs!

If you are ready to use paint chips to accomplish your home improvement goals, go to Vista Paint’s order form to request paint chips be sent straight to your home!