5 Tips To Find the Right Paint Colors for Interior Trim

When planning the interior paint scheme of their home, many homeowners focus on the walls. And, certainly, the wall colors are important since these have the largest visual footprint. But what about the trim and details? How can you make the best choices for the right impact using details? Explore a few important tips.



1. Identify the Details

Every home has a few common elements of trim that can be highlighted in interesting and surprising ways with accent colors. However, your home can easily have more than just door and window frames. Look for anything that could add character and personality to the space—things like arches, molding, wainscotting, baseboards, mantels, closet and cabinet doors, or lighting bases. 

You will not highlight or use the same accent colors on all these features, but understanding the potential gives you choices. It creates a strategy to achieve a certain look. 

2. Limit the Color Palette

A whole home color palette is a single set of paint colors used in various combinations and ways throughout the home. In general, it includes three to five main shades. You might use a light neutral as the wall color in the living room while using a darker wall shade and lighter trim colors in an adjacent room.

The advantage of finding and sticking with a small palette is that it makes things feel cohesive and unified. Sudden changes in color schemes among rooms tends to be jarring, and they bring the wrong kind of attention to rooms.

3. Seek Your Inspiration

Where should you start when choosing trim color? The best place to look for inspiration is within your home itself. Look for something with colors that please you and give you the vibe you are seeking at home. This could be a comforter, pillow, scarf, chair, dish, or artwork, for example. This inspiration informs your palette as a whole, which in turn helps you narrow down colors for trim. 

4. Create Room Flow

How you use both wall and trim colors will add to or take away from the flow between rooms. A single trim color in multiple adjacent rooms helps make them feel harmonious and relaxing. On the other hand, changing trim color can also be a bridge between rooms. For example, you might use different shades on a door's sides than on its edges to help transition users from one color palette to another. 

Flow is especially important in open floor plans where you must make a large space with multiple uses work together. This does not, of course, mean that you need to use the same color throughout the open space. Varying it in subtle ways, like highlighting certain trim features while camouflaging others or using different shades, helps keep things flowing smoothly. 

5. Don't Forget the Ceiling

Do not overlook the ceiling as an accent element. Ceilings may seem outside the important visual range of most users, but they have a large unconscious impact on how the room looks. A room can benefit from a ceiling painted the same color as either the walls or the trim features. Or you might want to lighten or darken the shade of one of these components to create a more subtle contrast that still ties in. 

Need help figuring out what to do with your interior trim? Get help from the professionals at Elevation Painting. We will put our years of residential painting experience to work for you, no matter whether your painting project is large or small. Call today to make an appointment or get more tips for choosing the right paint for every part of your home.