Choosing Living Room paint colors is one of the important starting points of the living room painting idea along with the right type of paint for your living room walls, ceilings and window and door trims. You can get the clues for the color scheme of your living room from its furniture, window treatments and accessories. The colors look different in different lights, in daytime and at night, so you may have use color chips and observe them in all possible scenarios to be sure that you get the desired results. If you are still not sure about the paint color choice for your living room, test it on a small part of the wall and see how it looks like.

This will also tell you exactly what the paint will look like because the color swatches and the actual shade that turns up after painting the walls may slightly differ. You can lend an open and airy look to your living room by installing a chair rail in the room and then paint the lower portion of the wall in a darker color than the wall above the chair rail. If you want to hide unattractive trim work in your living room or want a uniform monochromatic look to make it feel more spacious, paint the trimmings, moulds and the walls of the living room in the same color. However, if you want to add bold colors as accents to your room or highlight some attractive trim work in your living room, you can use a paint shade lighter or darker than those of the walls to catch the viewer's attention.

While choosing the paint color for your living room, keep in mind that colors do not always look same on the walls as they do in color charts of the paint companies. Bright and solid colors can appear lighter or darker than what you had intended depending on their surrounding colors and the amount of light in the area. Usually, colors appear darker than they really are over a larger surface area, so it is advisable to choose a shade or two lighter than the paint color you want in your living room. If the color still appears bolder after painting the living room, you can mute it down by covering the walls with a lighter shade of paint using the paint techniques such as rag rolling, sponging and color washing.

Strong and warm colors such as reds, oranges and yellows seem to advance and close a space, making the living room look cozier and more welcoming. Blues, greens and violets are known as cool colors and seem to recede and make a room look larger. However, the darkest shades of even the cool colors such as navy blue and hunter green make the living room look small. This is the reason that popular wall colors for the small living rooms are whites or light neutral colors such as beiges and caramels to make them appear larger. Normally, people paint their living room ceilings in white or off-white to make them look higher and give an airy feeling to the living room.

Medium to dark colors lower the ceiling visually and is good to be used in living rooms that have very high ceilings to make them look cozier. While in small and lower living rooms with ceilings painted in medium and dark colors will look like a dark cave. Choose a happy color that makes your feel comfortable throughout the day in your living room. The popular living room color scheme often uses soft and pastel paint colors in eggshell finish. The living rooms with ample natural light may use darker colors but they should be perfectly balanced with lighter colors so that the room doesn't look too dreary and dark. You may get the inspiration for the living room color scheme from your favorite piece of furniture that dominates your living space by taking it as to be the core color element and working on other colors around it.