3 easy websites for choosing interior paint color

A cheap and easy way to redo a room is to change the color of the paint on the walls. That’s the easy part. But choosing paint color? It might not be as simple as walking into your local hardware store and picking a color swatch.

If you’re the kind of person who can’t tell the difference between White Truffle and White Smoke, or don’t how you’re going to paint yourself out of the corner that the previous owner put you in by installing white appliances in a kitchen with mustard yellow counters, don’t worry.

We’ve selected three websites to help you make color choices, whether your want to upload pictures of the room and slap on digital color, or know you want to make a change but don’t know where to start.

Colorcharts.org

How it works: This is a catch-all site of color selections from dozens of companies, including Benjamin Moore, Sherwin Williams, Behr, Ralph Lauren and Martha Stewart Living. You can look at the colors on your walls, too — well, digital images of those walls. Upload your pictures and then paint them online to see if you really could live with that fuchsia you saw on HGTV. Colorcharts.org also lets you match paint across companies, so if you found a Behr color you like but prefer Sherwin Williams paint, it’ll find the best paint color match.

Need to know: The site isn’t free — it costs $9.95 for 30 days and $29.95 for two years, though you can download a free temporary trial.

Our take: If you’re doing a lot of painting (say, every room in your house), or you’d rather test out colors in a virtual world rather than the real one, it’s worth the $9.95. But for anyone else, the free trial will be sufficient.

Behr’s Color Smart

How it works: This program lets you jump into the world of paint color three different ways: by entering the name of a color you’ve already picked up, browsing colors through an online palette, or looking at combinations and ideas the site’s already put together. But the selection isn’t the best part of Behr’s Color Smart — it’s what you can do after you’ve picked a color. The Color Smart program lets you put in whatever color you have (whether you chose it or not), and it finds accents that match. If, for example, you’re stuck with the white appliance/mustard counter kitchen, you can put those colors into the formula, and it will show you colors that complement and match (shades of gold, green and purple, if you’re curious).

Need to know: You have to click on “Color Smart” from the Behr homepage to get to the color selection tool (there is no direct link). Also, as the name suggests, the program works only with Behr paint colors. However, the site also includes informative articles and how-tos about painting, so it can be more than just a one-company color resource if that’s what you need.

Our take: It’s a powerful tool for color matching inspiration, even if you’re not choosing Behr paint but just want ideas. The site also lets you create a “workbook,” so if you’re taking your painting project or projects slow and steady, it’s an easy way to save your paint color selections.

Better Homes & Garden Color-a-Room

How it works: Yes, Better Homes & Gardens is a magazine, but the Color-a-Room section of the website has a great tool to help you pick paint colors, especially if you don’t know where to begin. Start by picking the kind of room you’re going to paint, then select from BH&G’s templates the style closest to what you have (e.g. in the kitchen category, you can use a template for a galley kitchen, country kitchen or casual kitchen). Then you can start trying out colors, but not just on the walls. Test your hues on just about everything in the room, including tables, lampshades, pillows, carpet, flooring, cabinets, tile — even down to the kitchen’s range hood.

Need to know: The colors you choose aren’t connected to a specific paint company, so you’re on your own to find your preferred hues in paint. Also, you have to register to use the tool, but registration is free.

Our take: Would it be nice to upload pictures of the room you’re working on? Yes, but the site has plenty of template options, and it’s a great tool if you’re doing an entire room makeover because of how many items you can digitally paint. BH&G also offers similar applications for choosing paint for the exterior of your home and selecting window treatments as well. Caution: Be careful what you click when filling out that free registration form or you could be signing up for a magazine subscription.