Paint colour choices should be made carefully and delayed until the end of the process.

If you’re going to paper your walls, then you’re almost certainly going to want to match the paint. Here are some easy but requisite tips when choosing colour:

Tips for Removing Pasted Wallpaper:

1. Peel top layer of wallpaper off. A lot of wallpaper is strippable, which means it is easy to remove. Many old-fashioned varieties are not strip friendly. Use a scoring tool before applying stripper to allow better/faster penetration of steam or gel.
2. Once you peel back the first layer, spray the backing and adhesive with wallpaper stripper, which now comes in a gel for easy handling, no drips or mess. Let sit for 15 or 20 minutes, then scrape off and wipe wall clean with damp sponge. Make sure to cover the floor. (For really hard to remove paper, use a steam kit. Use alone or pour stripper in with the water as an option. A great choice for those concerned about chemicals.)

• Be Patient – It’s tempting to make a mad dash for the paint isle when starting home decorating projects, but the owner of Halifax’s Decorating Shoppe, Janice McCrea, warns against this, advising instead to purchase or select the furniture, area rugs, art, drapery and accessories that will be going into the room first, choosing wallpaper second—and paint last, because paint colour should be carefully matched to the wallpaper.Conversely, she says, you can’t guarantee with a paint colour that you’ll find matching wallpaper. Paint is clearly the most versatile item of all the items going into a room. Janice also recommends matching the background of the wallpaper to your paint selection to give the room a “seamless feel”.Having an idea of where you are going before you pick your paint colour, she says, is the key to success. Ask yourself what you’re hoping to achieve in terms of mood, instead of just attempting to match your furniture.
• Get Expert Advice – Getting the help of a Decorator/Designer who has an experienced eye for colour can save time, and even money by avoiding frustrating and costly mistakes. McCrea’s recommended in-home consultation will run you around $80 an hour, but selecting colours at home rather than in-store is ideal. Paint can look dramatically different under the fluorescent or halogen lights of a store from the unique lighting conditions of your room at home.
• A Benjamin Moore, spectrophotometer (colour matching machine), like those provided by ColourWorks Decorating in Halifax, can also assist you in matching wallpaper colours, or furniture items to an appropriate shade of paint. These machines are not effective for evaluating textured wallpaper, however, but most decorating shops have on-site decorators to assist in making the right choice, says Decorator, Lonnece Mensen of ColourWorks, who adds that the machines have to be tweaked manually at times to be effective.
• Pay Attention to Lighting – If you pick out a bright colour like aqua, which looks good on the paint chip, says Janice McCrea, don’t expect it to look the same in your house. In-store light boxes can help, but they aren’t precise so she recommends getting as big a paint sample as possible by purchasing a small can and then applying it directly on the wall. Alternately, apply the colour to a paint board and then move it around the room to sample the effect of lighting on each wall. Janice also recommends evaluating in the morning, afternoon and evening, as colours can change throughout the course of the day. “You want to make sure that you like it all the time and that it’s not picking up the colours that you didn’t want. For example, some beiges can end up looking more yellow, or some can appear more pink or more grey. It just depends on the underlying colour that’s coming out.”

Myth buster: Many people think that dark colours in small rooms will make the room feel smaller, but that’s not necessarily the case, says Janice. The illusion of space is contingent upon the lighting in the room, the accent colours, the size of the furniture or other items. “You can’t just blame the paint colour for all that. It is the overall room and everything else that comes into it, especially the lighting. She warns that expecting the paint colour to do all the work is problematic. “I think people have to realize that it is just not the paint colour but the lighting, the furniture, area rugs, art work, and accessories that bring a room together. There are a lot of layers to decorating.