As we are all going to spend a lot more time in our homes for the foreseeable future it’s a good opportunity to get to grips with all those niggly jobs that need doing around the house. And for some people, it will be a time to get stuck in with that redecoration project. 

To be honest, I’m going to have no free time at all, as I now have to be an actual full-time parent! FFS. So with a needy toddler in toe, I can’t imagine I’m going to get anything done around the house. But for those of you who are healthy and child-free, you have no excuse. 

But just because we are in lockdown and our world has been turned upside down, doesn’t mean you should rush into any decisions. Don’t panic buy a colour from a colour chart. They are printed digitally and are therefore just a representation of the colour, not the actual colour itself. Plus, a colour will look totally different depending on the orientation of your room which affects the light. 

So shortlist some colours and order yourself some testers. Farrow and Ball and Dulux are still offering free delivery on all their tester pots if you are in isolation and can’t venture out. (That will seem like a very odd sentence to those of you reading this blog years from now). And yes, tester pots are expensive, particularly if you are experimenting with a number of shades.  But can you afford not to use them? If you get it wrong you’ve wasted a lot of money and your precious time. You either have to start again or live with a colour you’re not happy with, so play it safe and invest in some testers. 

Image via Neptune

Good. You’ve done the right thing and got your testers.

Now stop! Don’t just slap them on your walls. That’s definitely not the way to do it.

Here’s how to use paint testers the right way.

1. DON’T PAINT THEM ON YOUR WALLS

The best thing to do is to paint your testers onto pieces of card or paper. This way they can be moved around so you can see the colour in different areas of the room and you can take them with you when picking out cushions and other accessories. So get yourself to hobby craft, which is doing a booming trade in these strange times.  Pick up a pad of 10 artboards for around £12. These are perfect for painting your testers onto. They are large and robust and you don’t need to blue-tac them to your walls, you can prop them up on surfaces like a mantlepiece or the floor. 

The alternative is to swing by the wallpaper section of B&Q. Help yourself to some large samples of whatever wallpaper you fancy (I don’t think this is technically theft). And when you get back home use the back of them to paint your samples onto. 

The only downside of this is that the edges are likely to be all jaggedy from where you’ve hurriedly hacked away at the roll before you’re spotted by security. And they can be a bit unruly as they will want to curl up, but if you neaten them up with scissors and flatten them out they can work just fine.

2. STUDY THE COLOURS IN DAY AND NIGHT 

Light has a huge impact on how we perceive colour. If you are going to be using your room all day long you need to love the colour in the morning, afternoon and evening. As the natural light shifts during the day, your colour will look different, and will also change again under the artificial light of evening time. So make sure you are spending time considering the colours at the key times of day you will be using the room most. 

Even a simple neutral can appear very pure in natural light and then take on a grey or greenish tinge under artificial lights. Or dark, dramatic colours may look glorious in the afternoon sunshine but then too gloomy at night.  So make sure you are happy with the colour all day long.

3. CHECK THE COLOUR ON DIFFERENT WALLS

Colour will appear different on different walls because of the natural light. This is another reason why we should paint our testers onto card and not our walls. A pale green may look beautiful and intense in your shadowy alcoves but look completely washed out on the wall opposite a large window. So move your tester around to see how you perceive it on different walls. Make sure you are happy with it all over. 4. CHECK THE COLOUR AGAINST YOUR FLOORS AND FURNISHINGS 

Again, another reason to be able to move your testers around. Prop your painted art board against the skirting to see it works well with the colour of the floors or the carpet. Prop it up behind the sofa to check it works with the fabric. Lay it on the rug to make sure it’s working with the colours. Sit it on your sideboard to make sure it works with the finish of the wood. All these things are impossible to do if you’ve painted a patch of colour in the middle of a random wall right?

5. TAKE IT WITH YOU

Yeah, I know I sound like a broken record but this is another reason to not paint your testers onto your walls. If you paint them onto an art board you can take them with you. So when you’re in John Lewis or Habitat and see that amazing cushion you can whip out your tester sample and check them out together. This takes away the guesswork or the hassle of having to return the cushion that turned out not to be the one. 

6. DON’T LINE THEM UP

It’s natural for us the line up all our testers next to each other to compare them but the reality is this really isn’t helpful. You may discount a perfect colour because it looks ‘too green’ next to the more blue tester on the left. But once you’ve painted the room you won’t have that random (more blue) tester next to it, so your colour won’t appear ‘too green’! So don’t discount a colour because of the way it looks next to another colour. Consider each tester one at a time. Prop one tester up, consider it for 24hrs, then put it away and prop a different colour up. 

So now you know how to use paint testers the right way. Yes, I know, this all takes time. But for a lot of us have that right now, so enjoy it and see how wonderful it is to choose the perfect paint colour the first time!

If you would like help choosing a paint colour or need any interior design advice then get in touch. I cover Southampton and most parts of Hampshire.